


Peter B. Parker's Interdimensional Field Trip

by 94BottlesOfSnapple



Series: Spider-Verse 2: Into the Devil-Verse [5]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel (Comics), Spider-Gwen (Comics), Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: B-verse, Crayolaverse, Cyborg Matt Murdock, Dimension Travel, Earth-14512, Earth-8311, Female Matt Murdock, Ganke Lee in ch1 and ch4, Gen, Just a lot of Matt Murdocks up in here tbh, Sam Chung in ch3 and ch4, teenage Matt Murdock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:42:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 26,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23815582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/94BottlesOfSnapple/pseuds/94BottlesOfSnapple
Summary: After the startling realization that Gwen's Matt Murdock is not an insufferable, sanctimonious vigilante with a stick up his butt -- and is instead a mega-evil supervillain -- Peter B. Parker intends to prove once and for all that Gwen's universe is the odd one out. How? By taking her along on a dimension-hopping field trip to meet everyone else's Daredevils.Follow Gwen, Miles, and Peter as they travel the universes and meet more Daredevils than you can shake a stick at!
Relationships: Ganke Lee & Miles Morales, Matt Murdock & Franklin "Foggy" Nelson, Matt Murdock & Gwen Stacy, Matt Murdock & Peni Parker (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse), Matt Murdock & Peter B. Parker, Matt Murdock/Franklin "Foggy" Nelson, Miles Morales & Matt Murdock, Miles Morales & Peni Parker & Peter B. Parker & Peter Benjamin Parker & Peter Porker & Gwen Stacy
Series: Spider-Verse 2: Into the Devil-Verse [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1440463
Comments: 86
Kudos: 272





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here we are, finally at the meat of this series. The beginning of the middle, you might say. I'm hoping this will give everyone a really good idea about the individual universes that make up the series. I've got a lot of one-shots for this series in the works, so if there's any particular universe you're keen to see more of please let me know!

Gwen insisted they continue to keep an eye on Ms. Murdock. Miles was skeptical it’d be of any use, but he agreed so long as she let him help with _her_ Murdock problem, which sounded way more serious. They had to be especially careful because, in Gwen’s words, they didn’t want Murderdock ‘infecting the multiverse like an evil mold and starting an interdimensional criminal empire’. Which was fair. That sounded nasty and also terrifying. But between that and schoolwork and his regular Spider-Man duties, Miles’s schedule began filling up real fast.

And then Daredevil showed up for training with Gwen’s listening device pinched between her fingers.

“What, uh, what’s that?” Miles asked her when she showed it to him, his heart nearly beating out of his chest.

Daredevil opened her mouth, then paused. Tilted her head. Frowned.

“It’s a listening device,” she said at last, slowly – not as though she thought he was stupid, but as though she was preoccupied by something. “A bug. A lot more high-tech than anything I’ve seen before. Quiet but powerful.”

_Play it cool, Miles. Play it cool._

“Oh, yeah?” he asked, and winced when his voice cracked.

 _Ok, cooler than that, come on_.

“It was found outside the apartment of some friends of mine,” explained Daredevil, and her lips twisted into a determined scowl that was very intimidating. “They happen to have made some pretty nasty enemies over the years helping me. And I don’t want them in danger. So, until further notice, this is our priority. We need to figure out who’s using these. And who’s making them.”

“Yeah,” Miles agreed, and barely managed to keep it from coming out in a terrified squeak. “Yeah, totally. We’ll, uh, we’ll get these guys.”

His extremely loud internal voice was telling him to tell the truth, but like. He just could not do that. No. Absolutely not. Not when Daredevil was so serious about it. Miles definitely did not want to be in trouble with her, and also the thought of admitting he’d been spying on his mentor’s friends who were nice enough to bail him out of police custody? Um. No. Impossible.

“Right,” said Daredevil, and her mouth did a serious frowny thing. “C’mon, kid. Patrol time.”

Miles nodded meekly and followed her as she leapt up towards the skyline.

* * *

So. From then on, Miles was spending his days at school, his evenings with Gwen, and his nights investigating himself because he was too embarrassed to tell Daredevil that the listening device belonged to a well-meaning eleven-year-old boy genius from another universe and not a criminal mastermind.

With that in mind, it wasn’t a complete shock he forgot about his promise to meet up in Peter’s universe for dinner with him and his MJ. He was busy quizzing Ganke for their upcoming math test when his watch began to beep. The number flashing across the front, 617, immediately reminded him what he’d forgotten.

“One of your Spider-guys?” Ganke asked, snagging a pocky stick from the box on his desk and sticking it in his mouth like a cigar. “Or the cute Spider-Gal?”

Miles laughed.

“Spider- _Woman_ ,” he corrected. “Man, Gwen would kick your butt if you called her a ‘gal’ probably. She’s super hardcore like that. It’s Peter, I gotta… I promised to have a family dinner with him and MJ.”

Ganke nodded sagely.

“Abandoning me to the derivatives, I see how it is.”

“I’ll be _back_ ,” Miles laughed again, opening the window and stepping onto the wall outside, parallel with the ground. “You gonna let some numbers kick your butt in the meantime or what? Have to get saved from your big bad math class by Spider-Man? I’ll do it for you, but I don’t promise not to laugh.”

“Yeah, yeah, just have your fancy dinner date! Get out of here.”

Miles could already see Ganke abandoning his math notes to surf the web. Not that that’d stop him from acing the test. Miles rolled his eyes and sighed, but fondly. Truth was, Ganke pretty much never studied for anything – but he always agreed to do it when Miles asked. Yeah, Miles had gotten pretty lucky with his roommate.

Shaking himself, he gave a quick glance around, though his Spider Sense usually let him know before he even opened the window when walking on walls in his school clothes might be a bad idea. Yup. Not a soul in sight.

Or, at least, any souls looking up.

Miles dropped down into an alley and finally answered his beeping watch. With a _blip_ , there was a man-sized portal, and Peter was stepping through it.

“Miles! Finally!”

“Uh, hey, Peter,” Miles greeted him, unable to stop from shuffling his feet a little.

“Jeez, kid, I was—” Peter faltered, then cleared his throat. “Uh. _MJ_ was worried. So I told her I’d come check on you. Which is why I’m here right now.”

The misstep was so big even Miles couldn’t miss it, but old guys like Peter liked to have a little, y’know, dignity. Peter was like Dad that way. Didn’t like to let people know when it turned out they’d gotten worried about silly stuff or panicked over nothing.

“Yeah, yeah, cool,” Miles agreed with a nod. “Dinner?”

Stepping aside, Peter gestured to the still-open portal. Looked like it led into a living room – nice couch, wood floor, little coffee table with like, ten empty mugs on it.

“After you, Miles.”

So, Miles stepped through the portal. Almost as soon as he was on the other side, the scent of garlic hit him and his stomach growled. Right after that, too soon for him to hope she hadn’t heard, MJ entered the doorway. Well, Miles was pretty sure it was MJ. She looked a lot like the MJ in his world, anyway – red hair, dimples when she smiled. Like Peter, she was older, with silver strands in her hair. But still pretty. Like a movie star.

“Miles?” she asked, and even her voice sounded like the MJ that Miles knew.

It took a hand on his back to get Miles to step into the room further and out of Peter’s way. Once Peter was through, he pressed a couple buttons on his watch and the portal faded with a tiny _blip_.

“Yeah, uh, hi, um. Ms. MJ? Ms. uh… Watson?”

It was probably a little bit of an oversight not to ask Peter what to call his maybe-soon-again wife, Miles considered with a wince. Stupid, stupid, stupid—

“It’s still Parker,” she told him with a bright laugh. “I kept it out of spite after the divorce. Along with the ring. You can just call me Mary Jane. Or Ms. Parker if you’re really worried about being polite. C’mere, the kitchen’s this way.”

She crooked a finger and headed back through the doorway, so Miles followed. Peter drifted along next to him, watching Mary Jane with a doofy look on his face. It was kinda weird to see him happy instead of grumpy or exhausted or freaking out, but… It was a good weird. For sure.

Peter and Mary Jane’s kitchen was just as nice as the living room. More importantly, the kitchen table was set for three and there was a huge bowl of marinara-slathered pasta in the middle of it. Next to the big bowl were two tinier ones – the first filled with meatballs, and the second with vegetables.

Miles’s nose twitched. Vegetables with actual spices on them! Whew! He’d been worried for a second there.

Mary Jane stood behind her chair until Miles took a seat, and then she and Peter sat too. Everybody dished up their own food. Even though his appetite had gotten massive after the spider bite, it was still way too mortifying to take a huge portion, so Miles kept his small.

“You know, Miles,” Mary Jane said, a teasing tone in her voice, “I’m pretty well acquainted with how much food is needed for an enhanced metabolism. You don’t have to worry about your portions here.”

When Miles jerked and glanced up at her, she gestured towards Peter with her fork. His plate had a mountain of spaghetti and like, at least four meatballs on it. Ok, yeah, that… That made sense. He didn’t pile it on all at once like Peter, but Miles did make sure to eat his fill.

The meatballs, Mary Jane explained when he asked, were a friend’s recipe. And the marinara sauce was from the tomatoes Mary Jane herself grew in a rooftop co-op garden. Peter hadn’t made any of it (besides the tear and bake chocolate chip cookies for dessert), which was not surprising to Miles at all. He’d always looked like the kinda guy who burnt water.

The rest of the meal, Peter and Mary Jane asked about what Miles was up to in his world. He told them the stuff he told his parents – about Ganke and his schoolwork and his art and new music he was listening to – but he also told them the stuff he couldn’t tell people not in the know. About being Spider-Man, learning engineering stuff from Aunt May, and training with Daredevil. It was refreshing, not having to hide anything.

Plus, Mary Jane was really cool. She was different than MJ, sharper and surer of herself. Actually, she reminded Miles of Aunt May. And she always had a way to one-up Peter or tease him. Not that Peter seemed to mind at all. Sure, he huffed about it a little, but just in that way people did when they were trying not to smile.

By the time dinner was over, Miles almost didn’t want to leave. Mary Jane promised they’d set up another dinner together, maybe even a big one with everyone over if she could wrangle it. Miles wasn’t a master chef or anything, but he was probably more useful in the kitchen than Peter, so he offered to help cook for it if they ever managed to coordinate everyone’s schedules. Working across six universes, it’d be a challenge, but Miles liked to think it would happen someday.

* * *

“So,” Peter said, once they’d made it back to Miles’s world. “Just busy tonight? Other engagements?”

Miles winced.

“I, uh. I forgot,” he admitted. “It’s been kinda busy. See, Daredevil agreed to teach me how to fight properly, which is good. But then I gotta worry about this lawyer who helped me out, Matt Murdock, because Gwen says—”

Peter held up a hand.

“Whoa. Kid. Hold up.”

“What?”

“Daredevil, and Matt Murdock?” asked Peter, and Miles nodded. “Miles, they’re the same person. Matt Murdock _is_ Daredevil.”

About ten things clicked in Miles’s brain at those words. Ms. Murdock’s weirdly familiar voice. Her and Ms. Nelson, ostensibly complete strangers, showing up unexpectedly at the precinct to bail him out of trouble. Daredevil being the one to find Gwen’s mic. Her concern about endangering Ms. Murdock and Ms. Nelson – or, really, just Ms. Nelson. Those head tilts both Daredevil and Ms. Murdock did. The bruises on Ms. Murdock’s hands.

His brain was telling him to say ‘oh’ in a very calm voice. His mouth wasn’t getting the memo, and instead emitted a slightly hysterical screeching noise, a little like a whistling kettle.

Now he really, _really_ couldn’t tell Daredevil about Gwen and Reed and the mic. Spying on her friends and suspecting them of being bad guys was awkward enough, but telling Daredevil he suspected her own alter ego of being a criminal mastermind? No. No _thank_ you, not in a million years. She’d either laugh him out of the city or tell him to find a new mentor or—

He just couldn’t.

Anyway, the person he really needed to tell was Gwen. After all, it’d hopefully stop her from worrying so much about Ms. Murdock, and instead give them more time to focus on stopping whatever evil schemes her Murdock was cooking up.

“I gotta tell Gwen about this,” Miles explained to Peter, pressing the buttons on his dimension watch that would let him ping Gwen’s so she knew he wanted to meet up.

The answer was pretty much immediate. Gwen looked relieved when she stepped through the portal. A little shaken up. Miles wanted to ask, but. He knew how it was with Gwen. She didn’t wanna talk unless it was on her terms – the kind of person you needed to ‘just give some space, mijo, they’ll open up when they feel safe’ as his Mami said.

“What’s up?” Gwen asked, glancing between Miles and Peter. “We doing a team-up?”

“Not… Exactly?” offered Miles, before launching into an explanation of what he’d just learned from Peter – that Daredevil was Matt Murdock, that all the pieces fit for that to be true in his universe as well.

An odd look crossed Gwen’s face when Ms. Murdock was mentioned, but she stayed quiet until Miles was done talking.

“Ok. So, then Daredevil’s a bad guy,” she concluded certainly.

“What?” demanded Miles, scandalized. “No! Daredevil’s a good guy! Lady! Whatever! She saves people.”

Peter sighed, scrubbing a hand through his hair and then over his jaw.

“What did your Daredevil do that’s so horrible?” he asked Gwen in a voice that said he probably didn’t want to know.

But Gwen shook her head, slicing her arm through the air.

“That’s the thing,” she said. “I don’t _have_ a Daredevil. It’s just Murdock. And he’s straight up bad news. He was Fisk’s lawyer-slash-assassin, and I’m pretty sure he’s running the guy’s entire criminal empire now. Plus, like, he _literally_ has an army of evil ninjas, and—”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Peter cut in, a horrified look on his face. “Your Matt Murdock is a _supervillain_?”

Gwen stared back at him like he was an idiot.

“Uhhh _yeah_. Yours isn’t?”

It took Peter like a whole minute to come up with a response to that. He pointed a finger at Gwen sharply, then deflated. Puffed up again with indignation, and then turned away to clutch his hands in his graying hair. Finally, he faced her again.

“No! He’s just kind of a jerk sometimes! What is _wrong_ with your universe?!”

Gwen sighed.

“I ask myself the same thing every day.” Then she shook her head. “But look, just because your Murdock is good doesn’t mean we can trust Miles’s.”

Far be it from Miles to contradict Gwen, but… He trusted Daredevil. May trusted her too, which meant a lot more – she had the experience to know if Daredevil was a hero or just a villain in disguise.

“We can trust her,” he said. “She worked with this universe’s Peter for a long time, they were friends. If Daredevil is Ms. Murdock, then we can trust her.”

“It’s your universe that’s weird, kiddo,” Peter agreed.

Squinting at them both, Gwen put her hands on her hips.

“Fine. Then prove it.”

“I will!” claimed Peter. “Pack your bags, Gwendolyn Maxine Stacy, I am not going to let this be another Google debacle!”

“Boogle,” Miles corrected.

“Hoogle,” added Gwen, unimpressed. “And how exactly are you going to prove this?”

This time, it was Peter who put his hands on his hips.

“We may not have found a tiebreaker for the Search Engine That Must Not Be Named, but I can guarantee we will for this. Daredevil is the most stick-up-your-a— _butt_ , holier-than-thou hero I’ve ever met. He’d have a conniption before he went evil. There’s no way he’s a bad guy in anyone else’s universe. So it’s time to go on a field trip!”

* * *

Of course, bursting into everybody else’s universes uninvited was right out, so they had to call a meeting the next day and sort it all out. It was a bit like a big video conference call, Miles thought, except with tiny portals instead of screens.

“What’s all this about?” Noir asked. “You got some baddies that need beatin’? Evil conspiracies to foil? Nazis to punch?”

“No, no, and no,” said Peter. “Actually, we were planning a little interdimensional trip. How many of you have a Daredevil?”

Peni raised her hand, and Noir shrugged and followed suit.

“Me!” Ham called, jumping up and down. “Me, I do!”

“And can Gwen and I come visit them?”

“Yeah, of course!” Ham agreed. “You guys’ll love Deerdevil, he’s a real barrel of laughs!”

Given some of the wacky hijinks Ham was known for – which were definitely more dangerous for anyone not made out of… Whatever rubber cartoon stuff the folks in Ham’s world consisted of – Miles wasn’t sure he wanted to know what Ham would consider ‘a real barrel of laughs’. Especially given the temperament of the Daredevil that Miles knew.

“Good, one down,” said Peter. “Peni?”

She nodded, grinning.

“Sure, yeah! I hang out with my Daredevil all the time. I’ll introduce you!”

There was some movement at her shoulder, and Miles had to squint to see that it was Peni’s spider, jumping up and down. Peni tilted her head like she was listening, and then after a few seconds, laughed.

“Ok, ok, yes, Them. _We’ll_ introduce them,” she corrected.

“And yours?” Peter asked Noir.

“I, uh...” Noir doffed his hat. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea. I mean, my guy, he’s not, like, evil or anything... But he is pretty messed up in the head.”

Peter blinked once, twice.

“Yeah, ok, fair point.” He nodded. “Ok, so the plan is, my place, Peni’s place, and then Ham’s place. Since you’ve already seen the one in Miles’s universe, three more should be enough to prove my point. Sound good, Gwen?”

Gwen shrugged.

“Sure, I guess.”

For a second, Miles bit his lip, unsure whether to ask. But then, nothing ventured nothing gained, right?

“I want to go with,” he said, as firmly as he could.

Everyone stared at him, and Miles felt his ears go hot with embarrassment. Finally, Peter shrugged.

“Yeah, sure, I guess. If you want.”

“How about you, Peni?” Miles asked, eager to take the attention off himself. “You want to come too?”

She just smiled and shook her head.

“It sounds fun, but.” She shrugged. “My aunt and uncle were really worried when I disappeared, I don’t think they’d let me go even if I told them when I’d be back. I’ll just meet you guys with my Daredevil when you come visit, ok?”

Gwen frowned. Miles got it, he did – what Peter called an ‘authority problem’, Miles understood as a fear of being caged in and pushed around. Gwen didn’t like stuff like that. And honestly, Miles had some… He had some concerns. Especially knowing Peni’s aunt and uncle worked for Oscorp. Sure, there were differences between their worlds, but the Oscorp in Miles’s universe had crumbled after its CEO turned himself into a giant… Gargoyle lizard bat… Thing. If that was the kind of experimentation going on in Peni’s Oscorp, he wasn’t sure how to feel about her aunt and uncle being part of it.

But Peni was also literally eleven. Like, if he’d gone missing for two whole days at age eleven, his Mami probably wouldn’t have let him leave his room until he was three hundred.

“That’s cool,” Miles said, making sure to sound as encouraging as possible. “If you’re sure.”

Peni nodded.

“Yeah. It’s ok. You guys can tell me all about it, right?”

Still looking a little troubled, Gwen agreed.

“We’ll take some selfies for you,” she offered, too.

They wouldn’t be able to send them across dimensions, at least not yet – but apparently Peni and Gwen’s Reed Richards had been portal-conferencing to try and figure out a way to accomplish that. Interdimensional texting would be awesome. And useful, since the watches could only ding when someone else’s was trying to connect to yours, not tell you anything about the situation on the other side.

Since the next day was a Saturday for everyone, they agreed to head out for Peter’s universe in the morning. That way everyone could get a good night’s rest and Miles and Gwen wouldn’t have to worry about missing school. There were a few more details to work out after that, but Miles let Peter handle those since he was supposed to be the adult. Instead, he thought about what he wanted to pack for their trip. He didn’t want to overpack, obviously, but being underprepared wasn’t cool either.

By the time everyone said their goodbyes and parted ways, Miles had a packing list typed out on his phone. He didn’t have to worry about what to tell his parents because he’d let them know on Thursday that he was staying at school for the weekend to study with Ganke – which he had actually been planning to do. But they’d gotten a lot of studying in already, and Miles could totally cram a little on the day of the test if he really had to. Meeting other Daredevils was way too cool an opportunity to miss.

“Back from the Spider Council?” Ganke asked when Miles got back to their room, looking up from the comic in his hands. “What’d they say?”

“Peter’s gonna take Gwen to meet other Daredevils. And I’m going with.”

That was exciting enough to get Ganke to ditch his comic entirely. Since he was the biggest superhero fanboy Miles had ever met, that wasn’t shocking.

“Dude,” he breathed. “Alternate Daredevils? Miles. Miles, you have to tell me everything about it.”

“I will, I will! But… I’ll need you to cover for me, ok, Ganke?” Miles pleaded as he stuffed a change of clothes, some snacks, his phone, a sketchbook, a handful of his finished nametag stickers, and an extra pair of web shooters into a duffel bag. “I’m gonna be gone like… A couple of days, tops. Just, I dunno, tell everyone I’m sick.”

Shaking his head, Ganke grinned and holding out a fist.

“Yeah, I’ve got you Miles.”

Miles knocked their knuckles together.

“I owe you,” he said, even knowing it’d make Ganke wiggle his brows with promised future mischief.

“You owe me sweet, sweet alternate universe hero stats for my collection,” Ganke reminded him. “Are you going now?”

“Nah, tomorrow. Bright and early though, so sorry if I wake you.”

Ganke see-sawed his hand.

“Fifty-fifty I’ll still be up by the time you leave anyway.”

Which was fair enough. Ganke was a total night owl. His texts were good for keeping Miles awake on especially boring night patrols. Speaking of which… Miles had one set up with Daredevil that night.

And he didn’t have a good excuse for why he’d be out of town all weekend. He spent about twenty minutes panicking about it before Ganke could pry the dilemma out of him. And then he laughed.

“Miles. Just tell her you’re staying with your folks over the weekend.”

Oh. Right. Miles thunked the heel of his hand into his forehead. Because, well, he did actually go home over the weekends fairly regularly, and he’d worked it out with Daredevil that he’d skip patrol and training those nights. All he had to do this time was _lie_ about it. Duh.

Of course, lying to Daredevil presented its own set of anxieties, but. He was Spider-Man, a literal actual superhero. He could do it.

* * *

He couldn’t do it.

How could someone have a piercing gaze when you couldn’t even see their _eyes_? Miles had no idea, but Daredevil had that laser-beam gaze down pat.

“A-anyway, I’m.” His voice cracked and he cleared his throat, resisting the urge to tug at his collar. “I’m gonna spend the weekend with my parents, so.”

There was a long pause. Too long. Like, extremely long, and Miles was going to absolutely lose his mind any second and start babbling apologies—

“You don’t have to lie to me, you know,” Daredevil said.

In a… In a really gentle voice?

“Wh. What?”

“Look, kid. I get that you…” Daredevil sighed, rubbed a hand over her mouth. “Doing this, it’s tough. And you’re young. I don’t blame you if you, if you need a break, or even just want one. You don’t need to tell me why, or try and come up with a lie. It’s ok. I’m sorry if. I’m sorry if I made you think it wasn’t.”

Oh.

Oh. That…

Miles’s heart squeezed in his chest a little.

He was a jerk.

Daredevil – Ms. Murdock – had done nothing but support him. And there he was, assuming things about her. Sure, she was tough. But she was a good mentor, too. She looked out for him – both in the mask and out, considering that save from the Hell’s Kitchen PDNY.

“No, _I’m_ sorry,” Miles said, frustrated tears welling in his eyes. “I shouldn’t have… I just… I’m sorry I assumed—”

A hand landed on Miles’s shoulder and squeezed.

“No. You were worried. There’s nothing wrong with that,” Daredevil assured him. “Look, if you’re anything like Pete, you spent way too long fretting about this whole thing and how I’d react. I’m thinking that might just be a Spider-Man trait. But it’s fine. We’re ok. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Miles still wasn’t entirely sure that was true, but Daredevil seemed pretty convinced of it. And as she led him in their usual patrol route, the anxiety from before slowly lost its grip on him in favor of that breathless feeling of falling, knowing his webs would catch him. There was no greater feeling in the whole world.

By the time patrol was over and he was headed home for the night, Miles’s worries had faded completely.

“Hey. Spider-Man,” Daredevil called over her shoulder, her body pointed back towards Manhattan like a compass point.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“Have a great weekend.”

Miles grinned beneath his mask, wondering if all the other Daredevils would be as cool as she was.

“I will.”


	2. Chapter 2

Gwen got up bright and early, donned her Spider-Woman outfit, and finished packing up her backpack. B wanted to prove Gwen’s Murdock was a one-off? Fine. Let him. Even if he was right, the other Murdocks were probably similar enough to hers that they’d share a weakness or two. Maybe B was focused on his ego, but Gwen was bound and determined to make her trip educational and productive.

As decided, at 8 on the dot she pinged B’s watch and he gave her the ok to come on through. She landed on the doorstep of the place B shared with Mary Jane. Miles was already there, wearing his Spider-Man costume under a hoodie and carrying a duffel bag.

“Oh, you kids can leave those here with me,” offered Mary Jane, jerking a thumb over her shoulder and into the house behind her.

Well, Gwen hadn’t been looking forward to dragging her backpack all over kingdom come. She unzipped it and tugged out her mp3 player, then handed the bag off to Mary Jane. Miles did the same, snagging his phone and what looked like a couple of name-card stickers before he handed over his duffel.

“And tell Matt hi for me, would you, Peter?” asked Mary Jane, dropping a kiss on B’s lips.

“Yeah, hon,” B agreed, sounding dopey. “Will do.”

Gwen could tell Miles – like her – was also making a grossed-out face, even under his mask. Ugh.  _ Adults _ . So gooey and sugary. Those were qualities, in Gwen’s opinion, better reserved for candy than people. Not that she wasn’t  _ happy _ for B, but just… She could be supportive from a place where she didn’t have to see them kissing and giving each other pet names like newlyweds.  _ So _ embarrassing.

“Which direction are we swinging to get to Daredevil?” Miles asked, once B and Mary Jane were done being schmoopy. “This way?”

“What? No. Arm down. There is absolutely no way we’re swinging all the way from Queens to Manhattan,” said B, forming an X with his arms. “It’s not happening.”

“Then what  _ are _ we doing?” Gwen demanded. “Taking the subway?”

* * *

They did indeed take the subway.

It probably wasn’t the weirdest thing any of the other passengers had ever seen, Gwen supposed. Plus, none of them knew her or Miles’s superhero alter-egos, so they helped B blend in as just another weird Spider-Man cosplayer. It was kind of nice to be able to go around in public as Spider-Woman – at home that was more or less impossible, since she was a wanted person. It’d be nice to be actually liked by the public, she thought to herself with a sigh, instead of having to thanklessly chase around guys like Bodega Bandit all the time. But whatever. Gwen was fine. She could handle it.

Plus, she had Miles to take her mind off things. He kept up a quiet running commentary about stuff that was different from home in B’s universe, and nudged her into joining. Lots of slight variations in company names that none of their worlds agreed on, a couple of things shared between Miles and B, and a couple more shared by Gwen and B. When they finally stepped off the subway, Gwen’s funk had passed. She also noticed Miles not at all subtly slapping one of his tagged stickers onto the wall of the subway station as they exited. He was even whistling, like a cartoon character. She shook her head and grinned.

Once out on the streets of Manhattan, it only took them a couple of blocks to make it to their destination: a small office building labeled Nelson and Murdock – just like in Miles’s universe. The idea of Murdock letting go of his own ego enough to allow someone else’s name go first was mildly baffling. Well, then again, if he was trying to hide illegitimate business, maybe letting the partner take front stage was the kind of play he’d make.

Still. Nelson and Murdock. That was two universes. Gwen tried again to imagine Murdock and DA Nelson owning a law firm together, and received instead a big red no symbol from her brain. Yup. Not happening. Too weird.

She and Miles followed B into the building, making their way with a bizarre amount of ease past the lobby and up to the top floor where Murdock and Nelson themselves actually worked. It was only then that they ran into a roadblock.

The secretary at Nelson and Murdock was fierce. Gwen respected that. B tried to just walk past her, let confidence carry him through, but she cleared her throat and fixed him with an unimpressed glare, rolling her wheelchair over to get between him and the partners’ offices. Next, B tried charm, which had even less of an effect. Gwen dragged a hand over her masked face while Miles stood off to the side and scrunched his shoulders up to his ears at the awkwardness of it all. When B started faltering, Miles straight up went invisible. Gwen really wished she could do the same.

“Becky,” someone called through the door, finally putting them all out of their misery. “Is there somebody out there?”

“A guy dressed up as Spider-Man and a couple of kids in off-brand costumes,” reported Becky.

“Dressed as?” B repeated, scandalized. “I  _ am _ Spider-Man!”

“And you  _ don’t _ have an appointment.”

She looked ready to throw down. Or at least, throw the stapler on her desk right at B’s head.

“I’m at a stopping point, it’s ok,” said the voice from the office at last. “We have a little time for vigilante nonsense. You can let them in.”

At those words, Becky did back down, though she fired an ‘I’m watching you’ sign at B before returning to her computer. Miles became visible again, and they all trooped inside.

There was another small lobby, and a door on the right and left. The left-hand door was closed with the lights off. The right-hand one was open and lit. Approaching that one, B knocked on the doorframe with the back of his knuckles, then tugged off his mask.

“Hey, Foggy,” he called, stepping into the office.

Gwen followed after him with Miles.

B’s Mr. Nelson – sitting at a fancy-looking desk piled with paperwork – looked a lot like the Mr. Nelson from Gwen’s universe, although like... Way, way older; his short hair was more salt-and-pepper than brown at this point, and there were deep lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth. Still, he looked... Nice. Had that same cautiously friendly Mr. Nelson demeanor, or whatever.

“Peter. I see you... Got some apprentices? Do you guys need legal help or something?” he asked.

B shook his head.

“No, nothing like that. Is Magoo in?”

Pursing his lips, Mr. Nelson shook his head.

“Is he ever?” he muttered, before saying, louder: “He’s out in the horns right now. Being a menace.”

A fond sort of grin pulled over B’s face. It was that, more than any of the words B and Miles had spoken in Matt Murdock’s defense, that truly caught her off-guard. From what she’d seen – even though B, like her, was making some progress after their adventure in Miles’s universe – he wasn’t exactly a happy sort of guy. To have him so at ease with the thought of Daredevil had to mean something.

Still. Her guard had to go back up. Gwen didn’t trust like that.

“Any idea where he’s running amok today?” B questioned.

“Mmm.” Rubbing his chin, Mr. Nelson considered the question. “I think he and Sam were meeting Luke in Harlem for something, but he should be headed back soon.”

“We’ll try to catch him on the way, then,” said B. “Thanks, Fogs.”

“Oh, and Peter?”

B paused in his attempts to herd Gwen and Miles back out of the office.

“Yeah?”

“It’s good to see you again,” Mr. Nelson said, kindly.

B’s responding thanks was a little choked up. Gwen pretended not to notice.

* * *

They took the back stairs to the roof of the building, then began swinging their way north, towards Harlem. New York looked mostly the same, Gwen found, but there was a quality of light that was different. She’d noticed the same thing in Miles’s universe, that the colors all seemed… Off, somehow. More neon? Brighter? In B’s universe, things felt less like that. More like… The colors were warmer, maybe? Everything was a little more red and yellow. Or something.

When they paused on a roof to catch their breath, Gwen’s Spider Sense tingled, so subtly she almost didn’t pick up on it at all. Frowning, she scanned her surroundings. Nothing to the left, nothing to the right, and—

“Peter,” said a gruff voice.

Gwen didn’t jump, but it was a close thing. Next to her, Miles’s limbs spasmed, and B jerked to attention.

“Ahhh, what the hell, Red!” B yelped, slapping a hand over his heart.

All three of them turned to face the person behind them.

“Heard you were looking for me,” said... Daredevil, apparently.

Who was supposedly also Matt Murdock, except like... As a superhero in bright red spandex and dorky horns instead of an evil cat-stroking Bond villain. Too weird. And not that Gwen didn’t trust B or anything, but she wasn’t gonna buy it until she had proof.

“Just wanted to introduce you,” explained B, putting one hand on Gwen’s shoulder and the other on Miles’s and dragging them in front of himself. “This is Miles, and Gwen. Kids, this is Daredevil.”

“Is that really your suit?” Miles piped up after like five seconds of awkward silence. “Because it doesn’t look like it protects you very much. My Daredevil has, y’know, actual body armor.”

Daredevil’s mouth tightened — kinda like Mr. Nelson’s had. Then he tugged his cowl back to reveal bright red hair and yup, yeah, oh man, that was  _ definitely _ Matt Murdock. Literally the only differences between them were like, B’s Matt had wider shoulders and tanner skin. And of course he was hella old. Well. Gwen guessed she couldn’t pass judgment on his blue eyes, since she’d never seen Murdock with his shades off. But still. The jaw, the nose, the head tilt, the way he held himself? Murdock, 100%.

“Peter. Benjamin. Parker,” he growled. “What the  _ hell  _ have you done?”

B laughed anxiously — for once losing his grumpy old man vibe. He sounded like a kid who’d just got caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

“Now, Red... Think of your blood pressure,” he said nervously, taking a step back and pulling Gwen and Miles with him when that didn’t curb Murdock’s sightless glare. “Think of  _ my  _ blood pressure!”

“What. Did. You. Do.”

B winced.

“Well, you know how I vanished a while back? Gone for a few days, poof?” He paused, but Daredevil continued to say nothing, his arms crossed over his chest and a single ginger eyebrow quirked. “Or uh, not. I was kind of isolating myself at the time, yeah, totally makes sense if you didn’t— Anyway I happened to get pulled through a, uh, portal into this charming young man’s universe—” he shook Miles’s shoulder— “and I met some Spider-people from other dimensions who were in need of my expertise. Thought I’d give ‘em the tour of our place.”

“Give them a tour of— Are you  _ completely _ —” Daredevil clenched his gloved fingers in his silver-streaked hair and hissed a breath out through his clenched teeth. “You just kidnapped a couple of, of  _ children _ from alternate dimensions? To give them a  _ tour _ ? Peter! You have no idea if it’s safe for them to be here – for them or for our universe!”

B cringed. Gwen closed a hand over her dimension watch, trying hard not to think about the glitches from her first time in Miles’s world. The feeling of being warped and stretched, torn apart at the seams. She had the watch. B and Miles and all the others had watches. They were traveling along the strands of the dimensional web, not being ripped through them. It would be ok, just like Gwendolyne had said. Gwen took a shaky breath, then another.

Daredevil was still snarling at B. But this whole situation wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t. And Murdock was Gwen’s responsibility. Seeing his doppelganger so pissed off at B just made her think of Murdock looming over McAllister. She couldn’t, she couldn’t let…

“Why would you do something so irresponsible?” Daredevil demanded.

“Because I asked him to,” Gwen snapped, stepping between B and Daredevil and spreading her arms wide to let the guy know that he’d have to go through her to get to B.

“Gwen—” B started, but was immediately interrupted by Daredevil.

“And why did you do that?”

He didn’t seem quite as angry anymore, suddenly. Not the way she’d expected. Just startled, curious, interested.  _ Wow _ was his face expressive.

“Because the Murdock in my universe isn’t like you at all,” she told him, but couldn’t make herself say the words ‘he’s an evil supervillain jerkwad’ like she wanted. “B said you were different and I wanted proof.”

Daredevil’s red brows furrowed.

“You’re… Close, to the version of, uh, of me in your universe?” he asked.

Gwen… Did not want to answer that. Obviously the answer was hell no, but. Well. Not really? Murdock was her mentor, whether she liked it or not, and no matter how much of an evil sleazeball he was. Not that she’d be able to admit to that in present company. B would fly totally off the handle, and Miles… Yeah, she really, really still didn’t want him to know.

“You… Uh. You could say that,” Gwen settled on at last.

Daredevil tilted his head.

“What is it that makes us so different, your Matt Murdock and I?” he asked, and the calculating expression on his face was eerily familiar.

The guy was still suspicious of her, at least in some regards. But it did seem like he wasn’t gonna throw hands with a kid, which was good. Though Gwen did have him beat in the strength department, unless Daredevil had some superpower perks that Murdock didn’t.

“He’s not Daredevil,” she said after some thought, because that was both true and safe. “There isn’t a Daredevil in my world.”

Daredevil contemplated that, but didn’t press further. Instead, he turned towards Miles.

“But there is one in yours?”

In response to this scrutiny, Miles shuffled his feet and flickered in and out of sight a few times. Not that that last bit would make any difference to Daredevil, Gwen supposed.

“Uhh, yeah,” said Miles. “She’s, um. Training me.”

“She,” mused Daredevil.

He opened his mouth, probably to ask more about Miles’s lady Daredevil, but B cut in before he had a chance.

“The point is, they’re important to me,” B said, both awkward and earnest, “and I wanted them to meet you.”

Gwen watched those words melt Daredevil into a puddle of goo in real time. He sighed, ruffling his own hair and revealing more silver strands hidden beneath the red.

“Ok,” he murmured. “Yeah. Ok. Gwen and Miles, right? What did you want to know?”

Oh  _ so _ many things. But first…

“Can I ask about the ‘DD’ on the costume?” Gwen asked, just to needle him. “Like, do people routinely forget who you are, or are there other dudes hopping around in red spandex and horns?”

If Murdock really was a good egg in B’s universe, and not liable to shish-kabob her, she had to get her digs in. Was it fair to B’s Murdock? Not really. Was it the mature thing to do? Definitely not. But Gwen was fifteen and she didn’t feel like being mature or fair. Also, she was still kind of ticked at him for yelling at B before.

B’s Murdock batted the ball back into Gwen’s court with ease, a handsome grin on his face.

“Oh, there’s a ‘DD’ on here?” he asked, plucking at his costume. “No one ever bothered to tell me that. Thanks, kiddo.”

Her heart jolted. Kiddo. In that same voice, the same slightly-teasing tone Murdock took when he was in a good mood. So, B’s Murdock didn’t just look like Gwen’s, he talked like him too. And yet, there he was in – admittedly on-brand in the color scheme department – bright red spandex, saving the day. Exactly the same and yet nothing alike at all.

As if he could sense her unease, the smile slipped from Daredevil’s face.

“Hey, are you ok?”

Gwen nodded.

“Yeah, I’m. I’m fine.”

Miles, thankfully, intervened then by asking Daredevil about ‘cool fighting moves’. The old guy proceeded to brag about some of his old fights, with B popping in now and again to make corrections and bring him down a peg. In retaliation, Daredevil told them about the time B got his costume stuck on a broken fire escape railing and gave himself a wedgie.

“Not cool, Red,” B grumbled, pointing an accusing finger at him. “Not cool. See if I save you from an elaborate death trap ever again.”

It was like a big brother and a little brother picking on each other, Gwen decided. Daredevil cared about B, just as much as B cared about him. And in that way, he was totally different and a million times better than Murdock. He also quietly egged Miles on to get information about the lady Daredevil, but Gwen supposed if someone told her about a dude Gwen in their universe she would probably be curious too. More than that, his super expressive face meant Gwen could tell he was actively listening to Miles and interested in what he had to say.

“Let’s see how well she taught you the basics, then,” Daredevil said, holding out a hand. “Make a fist for me. A good punching fist.”

As he watched, B leaned against the ledge of the roof and tugged off his mask. There was some sweat at his hairline, and he swiped it away with the back of his arm. Gwen was tempted to do the same, but couldn’t work up the recklessness to unmask. Standing in front of Daredevil, Miles did as he was told, then offered his hand up for inspection. Like Murdock had with Gwen, Daredevil ran his fingers over the fist, checking the angle of Miles’s wrist, the position of his thumb. And then he grinned – something handsome that gave him smile lines and wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.

“Very good.”

“Yeah?” Miles asked eagerly.

Gwen flexed her fingers. Formed a fist and then spread her hand flat again.

“Yeah. I’d say you’re doing her proud,” Daredevil confirmed; then he tilted his head. “How about you, Gwen? Want to give it a try?”

She… She did. Yeah. Just, it was weird. Well, ok, the whole spider-themed superhero thing was probably already more weirdness than your average person could handle, even before alternate dimension stuff. So Gwen being weirded out by this much nicer version of her evil mentor was excusable, she figured. But his expression was gentle and he seemed really cool and maybe Gwen wanted to pretend for a minute that this guy was teaching her how to fight instead of Murdock.

“Yeah, uh, sure,” she said, stepping closer. “How’s this?”

Daredevil inspected her closed fist, and Gwen wondered if he had as many scars under those gloves as Murdock did.

“Wonderful,” praised Daredevil when he released her hand. “You’ve definitely got it down. Unlike  _ some people _ who had to break their fingers a couple of times before finally committing to getting the proper form.”

“Yeah, well at least I never got thrown in a dumpster,” B grumbled, which only prompted a laugh from Daredevil.

Then he cocked his head to the side, scrunching his red eyebrows together.

“Incoming,” he noted, out of nowhere.

Gwen’s Spider Sense remained mysteriously quiet. She glanced around, puzzled, and exchanged a shrug with Miles.

“Hey! Were you two having a party without me?” said a voice Gwen didn’t recognize.

It was then that she noticed the guy hopping building to building towards them.

“Oh great,” B muttered. “This guy.”

“This guy? That’s all I get?” the weirdo in red lamented as he finally touched down on their rooftop. “Spidey, you’ve hurt all three of my feelings. I was expecting at least a ‘fuck off, Deadpool’ – is your attitude towards me truly so lukewarm now?”

Then he caught sight of Gwen and Miles. Or, that’s what Gwen assumed. It was kind of tough to tell with the mask. Either way, he perked right up, and Gwen? Ooh, Gwen did not like that.

“Spider-children?” Deadpool – apparently – gasped. “Babe! I didn’t even know you were pregnant! Think how much child support I’ve unknowingly skimped on!”

Miles took a large step back.

“Uhhh, I already have parents.”

“I thought you were back with MJ, B,” Gwen said sharply.

“I was!” sputtered B, waving his arms. “I am! He’s not— This isn’t—  _ Ughhh _ .”

With an impressive amount of mock-sympathy, Deadpool patted B’s shoulder. For his part, B just dropped his head into his hands.

“Uh. Deadpool, right? Who are you, anyway?” Miles asked, getting to the heart of things as usual.

“Wow, Spidey really didn’t tell you shit about me?”

Deadpool mostly sounded fake-hurt about this, but Gwen thought she could detect some real-hurt underneath it.

“Something tells me… You’re not exactly child-friendly,” ventured Miles.

“I’m very friendly to children. I have one. She got a scholarship.”

And that… Was the voice of every proud, doting dad ever. Coming out of a guy in a red rubber mask with swords strapped to his back. B definitely had no room to call Gwen’s universe weird.

“He’s… A friend of mine,” B explained, and Gwen was glad he’d finally decided to take the initiative here because everyone else was spewing stuff she had no context for. “Like Daredevil. I met ‘em both when I was, I dunno, sixteen maybe? We ended up bumping into each other a lot after that, and they looked out for me.”

“That’s us!” Deadpool agreed brightly, hooking one arm around B’s neck and the other arm around Daredevil’s. “Team Red!”

“Will you get—”

B and Daredevil both struggled to try and get out of the pseudo-chokehold, but only Daredevil actually succeeded. With his left arm free again, Deadpool repurposed it to give B a noogie.

“Awww, Spidey, I missed you!” he crowed.

Gwen shook her head at the spectacle but decided it wasn’t her problem to deal with B’s bizarro friends for him. Then her attention snapped back to Daredevil when he tilted his head and sniffed the air.

“… You were with Sam,” he said slowly, turning towards Deadpool, who dropped B in response. “Where is he?”

“Mmm.” Deadpool shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Regrettably, Sammy will not be joining us today.”

Gwen got to watch, in real time, Daredevil’s jaw do the ‘I’m going to fucking murder you’ clench. Despite him being kind of a geezer, it was almost more intimidating than when Murdock did it, just because Daredevil was bulkier.

“Wade. What the hell did you do to my kid.”

“Nothing!” Deadpool insisted, putting his hands up. “Nothing, Magoo, come on, he’s fine, he’s helping Ellie pack her shit for college.” There was a pause, and the eyes of Deadpool’s mask squinted. “Did you just call him your—”

“Trainee!” Daredevil said loudly, losing any and all intimidation he had. “Apprentice!”

B slapped a hand to his forehead and groaned. Gwen felt for him. Growing up around those guys must have been twelve train wrecks and a dumpster fire.

The apprentice thing definitely piqued her interest, though. Both because she was interested in how Daredevil trained this guy – compared to how Murdock was training her – and because she might have to watch out for a copy of him in her own world in the future. Also because his name was Sam. She knew a Sam, but was it the same one? Did she have to worry about Murdock snapping up little Falcon? Because,  _ wow _ was that not ok.

“This is the problem with you, Magoo,” said Deadpool. “You always freak out and backpedal because you don’t want people to know you care about them.”

“Oh, not this again,” Daredevil muttered. “I don’t  _ freak out _ ! Not everything is some— some abandonment issues thing! Look at Peter, he’s fine, he’s doing ok, he and MJ are doing ok now, letting him be was the right choice!”

Gwen chanced a quick glance at B, to see how he was taking suddenly being the topic of conversation. By his cagey ‘I would literally climb a flagpole to get away from this’ posture, not well.

“We’re a  _ team _ !” Deadpool snapped. “We were supposed to be there for him in his moment of crisis! And I  _ would have been _ if you didn’t drop-kick me off a building every time I got within thirty feet of his apartment!”

“He needed time to process without you smothering him!” Daredevil insisted.

“Hey, let’s get one thing straight, Magoo,” said Deadpool, jamming a finger in Daredevil’s chest, “the only people I smother are the ones I’m looking to kill.”

Gwen watched them argue, back and forth, rally and repeat – like a game of tennis. She’d seen some grumpy old guys in her time, but these dudes? Boy, they took the cake. It was kind of wild to see Matt Murdock of all people have strong thoughts and feelings about taking care of people. You know, in a way that wasn’t a thinly-veiled euphemism for murder. But they were getting kind of heated. Gwen wondered if they were going to end up fist-fighting – although the Deadpool guy had swords, and Gwen got the feeling he wouldn’t hesitate to use them if provoked.

She was jerked out of her spectating by B’s hand closing around her arm again. His face was blotchy with color, and he had that sort of familiar ‘kill me now’ look Gwen usually associated with someone’s parents being extremely embarrassing. Fair enough. Deadpool and Daredevil were discussing his whole big humiliating didn’t-shower-for-weeks, surviving-on-delivery-pizza breakdown right in front of her and Miles. It wasn’t something the three of them discussed openly. It was over, B was doing a lot better, and he was an adult while they were kids. They could support each other as friends, but Gwen got the feeling that – like her dad, like the Parkers – B wasn’t comfortable airing all his burdens to someone so young.

While the fight raged on, B tugged Gwen and Miles back one step, then two.

“Well, I think that’s enough of that,” he said hurriedly. “We came, we saw, time to go visit Peni—”

“ _ Peter _ ,” Daredevil growled, and B froze like a deer in the headlights.

Gwen had a brief, very brief thought – which was promptly shoved into a box to never be opened again – that it would be seriously cool if Murdock could teach her how to do that.

“Red, come on,” B groaned.

“No, we need to talk. You and the kids are coming back with me. No running off. Got it?”

“Yeah. I got it.”

Daredevil nodded sharply, then rounded on Deadpool.

“And  _ you _ .”

“Me?” Deadpool asked innocently, pointing at himself.

“When Sam’s done helping Ellie, you send him right back to the office. Got it?”

Deadpool crossed his heart and narrated it.

“Farewell, Spiderlings,” he said brightly. “Next time, give me a ring before you pop in and I’ll bring presents!”

Then, with a wave, he was off.

“You will not!” Peter shouted after him. “… Agh, jeez. He’s not listening.”

“When is he ever?” Daredevil asked, but there was more of a humorous tinge to his resignation than an irritated one. “Come on. Let’s go.”

He pulled his cowl back over his face and crooked his finger. B donned his mask again. Then they all followed after Daredevil back to the law firm. Even without webs to swing from, Daredevil made up for it pretty well with his parkour and grappling line. Gwen watched him the whole way, comparing his movements to what she’d seen when sparring with Murdock.

* * *

When they were all safely crammed in Mr. Nelson’s office, Daredevil unmasked again.

“I think it’s high time I heard about your… Adventure, Peter,” he said. “We’ll do it over lunch. Fogs, can you call the Thai place on—”

“We’ve got lunch with the gals today, Matty,” Mr. Nelson interrupted.

Daredevil paused. A brief flash of panic crossed his face.

“It’s that time of the month already?”

“Yup.”

“Oh. Hmmm. Uh… Peter, I don’t think…” Daredevil trailed off.

“Right. Yeah. Gotcha,” agreed B, giving a thumbs-up. “We should probably be on our way anyway. Miles, Gwen, say goodbye to the nice lawyers.”

“Bye Mr. Nelson, Mr. Murdock,” Miles said politely, waving.

“Bye,” added Gwen. “Have, uh… A good lunch?”

Daredevil grimaced. Mr. Nelson laughed.

“Oh!” B exclaimed. “Right. MJ says hi.”

“That’s sweet,” said Mr. Nelson, sounding pleased. “Have her call, I’ll try and set up dinner with the whole team soon, ok?”

Another thumbs-up from B, another round of goodbyes – which Gwen probably should have expected from adults, honestly – and they were out the door and retreating under the watchful gaze of Becky the secretary.

Miles slipped into the alley next to the building to slap a sticker on one of the bricks.

* * *

They picked up some burgers and decompressed at B’s place while he filled in a few of the gaps from their whirlwind meeting with Daredevil. Gwen had kind of wanted to talk to Mary Jane again, but B explained she had probably left for work right after they’d set out for Manhattan.

He also explained that, unlike Miles’s weird-ass Nelson and Murdock, his were not romantically entangled as far as he knew. They were strictly business partners and BFFs. That was just fine with Gwen, who preferred to live in a reality where she didn’t have to think about old people doin’ it, especially when one looked like a friend of her dad’s and the other looked like her evil nemesis-slash-mentor.

With her Murdock being so different – and her not knowing, well,  _ anything _ about his personal life – Gwen didn’t have much to add to that particular conversation. Miles, however, had lots of other questions.

“Who are ‘the gals’?” he asked next, which, to be fair, Gwen had also been wondering.

B rubbed the back of his neck.

“They’re, uh. Matt’s exes. All of which are scary competent and at least one of which is a former assassin,” he explained. “So, as fun as it would be to see them make fun of him, I try to avoid them when I can.”

Miles nodded and made a thoughtful noise, taking a bite of his burger. Gwen swirled a fry in ketchup as she built up the nerve for her own question. Not that she was afraid B wouldn’t answer it, but part of her really wanted to delay the possibility of getting the answer she dreaded. Still. Bravery was a Spider-person trait. She had to. Not knowing wouldn’t help her in the long run.

“Tell me about Sam,” Gwen ordered, stabbing her fry into the ketchup again. “Daredevil’s apprentice.”

Daredevil, at least, she was finally convinced was good people. But given that everything was flip-flopped in her universe, she really didn’t want Murdock to show up with a genuinely evil apprentice a month down the road. Especially if it meant he’d drop her – and her dad’s case – like a hot potato. If this Sam was going to be a problem for her, she needed to know ASAP. Also, she really,  _ really _ didn’t want little Falcon to get caught up in Murdock’s crap. If he was the Sam in question and she had to hide him, or get Cap to hide him, or, or  _ something _ , well, she needed to know  _ that _ ASAP too.

“Sam,” B said thoughtfully, running a hand through his hair. “Uh. Samuel Chung. He goes by Blindspot. Matt picked him up a couple years ago now, back when he was living in California for a while. I wanna say he’s… Twenty… Something? Kid’s super smart; he invented his own invisibility suit and everything. You saw Magoo won’t admit it—” Here, B picked up a french fry of his own and gestured with it before stuffing it in his mouth and continuing— “but they’re basically father and son.”

So. Sam Chung. Good, that meant Gwen probably didn’t have to worry about Murdock trying to snatch up Falcon. And if he met B’s Daredevil in California, then Murdock wasn’t likely to run into a version of him in New York. Gwen’s luck was crap sometimes, but it would take a pretty spectacular set of circumstances to make Sam Chung a problem in her universe. Good.

Satisfied, she ceded the floor to Miles for the next question. They traded back and forth like this for a while – B talked about Daredevil’s move out to the west coast, reluctantly filled Gwen in on some of the weak points to his powers, and explained to both of them what a ‘Defender’ was. But somewhere in the middle of B’s second burger and Miles’s third box of fries, the conversation got thoroughly tangled. Miles and B kept talking past each other, contradicting each other, until finally—

“Wait,” Miles interrupted, shaking his head. “No, man, not your Daredevil,  _ my _ Daredevil.”

And then the reason for the mix-up became clear.

“Ughhhh,” Gwen groaned. “This is too confusing; can’t we just give them code names?”

B blinked.

“Code names? Like what?”

“We can call your Murdock ‘Magoo’,” she suggested.

B quirked a very unimpressed brow.

“Um, no.”

“You call him that,” Gwen pointed out reasonably.

“It’s an us thing, squirt,” said B, like a butthead. “People too young to know who Mr. Magoo is do not get to use that nickname for Red.”

She was seriously going to kick him in the shin someday. Hard. As if sensing her violent thoughts, Miles grabbed her arm and cleared his throat.

“W-well, hey, what about ‘Red’ for Peter’s Daredevil, then?” he suggested.

“Red doesn’t really work, though,” Gwen pointed out. “In case you haven’t noticed, they’re probably  _ all _ red. Even Murderdock is red and he’s not actually Daredevil.”

A thoughtful look came over Miles’s face.

“You’re right,” he agreed slowly. “But. What if they were different shades of red? You know like, like Peter’s can just be Red, and mine can be Scarlet ‘cuz that’s also a girl’s name.”

It worked as well as anything else, Gwen supposed. B agreed. Murdock did not get a cool new nickname, because he sucked and also the idea of thinking up a shade of red that matched his particular brand of evil sounded daunting.

Once that was all settled, they cleaned up their trash and B offered Miles a magnet so he could put one of his stickers on the fridge while leaving the backing on. Then Gwen and Miles gathered their bags and checked the time. It was still about fifteen minutes before Peni would be able to meet them, but she’d said when they’d first discussed things that it was ok to come early as long as they didn’t ping her bracelet and show up in the middle of her lunch with her aunt and uncle. Which Gwen understood completely. She had no idea what she’d do if a whole bunch of Spider-people popped into her dimension right in the middle of family dinner. Horrible. Peni did not deserve the groundings that would probably result.

So B centered his watch to a rooftop in Peni’s universe, somewhere she’d said was close enough to meet them when she was free, opened a portal, and the three of them stepped through.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is almost 8800 words long. Savor it please because it took foreeeeeveeeeer

If Miles had to pick one word to describe Peni’s universe, that word would be ‘glowy’. Everything was lit up like Times Square as far as the eye could see. Holographic billboards and signs, office buildings with colorfully-tinted windows, even some weird translucent piping that Miles had no idea the purpose of. Just… Glowy, man.

He kind of loved it.

Pulling his phone out of his hoodie pocket, Miles snapped a few pics of the skyline. Ganke would lose his shit over them, and they’d be good inspiration for Miles’s art. So many colors – he’d have to get new markers just to capture it all. Next to him, Gwen gave a low whistle.

“Wild,” she murmured.

“I know, right?”

“Feel like I need sunglasses,” added Peter, shading his eyes.

“You can admit it’s cool,” Gwen complained, shoving him.

The roof they were on had a railing, so Miles tucked his phone back in his pocket and leaned on it, waiting for Peni to show up. He let Gwen and Peter’s light bickering fade into background noise as he took in this brand-new world. He’d never get over it, that rush of everything being different but the same, the feeling that the colors had shifted behind his eyes. It made him want to bring it all home, the vivid worlds his friends lived in.

“ _What are you doing here_?” a voice growled from behind, directly in Miles’s ear, and his Spidey Sense went from zero to a million instantly.

He whirled around, electricity from his venom strike already leaping out of his fingers and towards the tall, armored figure who’d snuck up on him. Right as the guy jerked back from the zap coursing through him, Miles clocked the horns.

Daredevil.

Although way different than Miles would’ve ever expected. The guy wasn’t even wearing red! His suit was mostly black and light brown, with white accents and… Yellow shoulder and knee pads with spikes on them. Because that made _perfect_ sense.

“Wh-what, what’d you,” stammered the strange Daredevil in his low, rough voice, stumbling back towards the edge of the roof.

His right hand spasmed, fingers jerking open and then twitching unnaturally. _Oh no_ , Miles thought, horrified, _what if he’s got a pacemaker?_ He did _not_ want to be known as the guy who gave Daredevil a heart attack, and who _knew_ how old this dude was after seeing B’s ancient Daredevil?

Then holes began to form in Daredevil’s right glove and the right leg of his pants, emitting blue sparks. _Oh_ , Miles realized distantly, _he’s a cyborg_. And that was all that got through his brain before Daredevil’s leg suddenly crumpled out from beneath him and he toppled backwards off the roof, on the one side with no railing.

Miles lunged forward, shooting out a line of webbing. Next to him, Peter and Gwen did the same. But without a line of sight, they all missed their target. When Miles made it to the edge and looked over, Daredevil was lying on a ledge about two floors down. Which was better than falling the full ten or so floors that made up the building, at least. But he didn’t get up, and Miles could make out a pool of blood forming near his head, and aside from his twitching right limbs he was utterly still.

Peter sucked in a breath through his teeth.

“Oh f—”

“Did we just kill Daredevil?” Miles asked, voice a little shrill with very, _very_ reasonable fear.

“You mean did _you_ just kill Daredevil,” corrected Gwen.

“Not helping!”

A hand closed over Miles’s shoulder.

“Hey. He’s not dead, Miles, not from that. I’ll go check on him,” said Peter. “You two wait up here.”

He swung down, landing next to Daredevil with a crouch. After looking him over for a few seconds, Peter peeled back his cowl to reveal red hair already sticky with blood.

“He’s ok!” Peter called up at last, waving one arm while he eased the other under Daredevil’s shoulders, cautious of his spikes. “Just a cut on his temple, I don’t think he hit it on the concrete.”

Whew.

And then Miles’s ears caught a familiar sound on the breeze – a _thwip_ followed by the grinding movement of large metal limbs. Peni. He pulled his gaze off of Peter and Daredevil to search the skyline. And there she was – or, rather, there was a red and blue robot – swinging through the streets towards them.

“Over here!” he called, cupping one hand to the side of his mouth and waving with the other.

The robot’s free arm – the one not web-slinging – waved back. It landed on the next roof over. There was a soft _click-beep_ as the bot’s intercom turned on.

“Hi, guys!” greeted Peni cheerfully. “Have any of you seen— Oh. What happened to DD?”

“He scared Miles, got zapped, and fell off the roof,” explained Gwen, ticking the events off on her fingers. “What was he even doing here?”

“Sorry, sorry! We meant to explain and bring him over together but. Had to finish a fight,” Peni called, her voice tinny over the intercom as SP//dr swung down to scoop the downed Daredevil out of Peter’s grip and into a robotic arm. “We didn’t expect him to go running off.”

We. Miles didn’t think Peni even realized she was doing it. But then, she was in the robot, the one she and Them the spider had to pilot together. If it was anything like that sci-fi movie with the giant robots Miles had gone to with his dad a couple years ago, they probably had to, like, mind-meld a little bit to run SP//dr. Whatever. He’d think about it later when Peni’s Daredevil – Cyborg DD, Miles decided in his head since the guy didn’t have a single stripe of red on him – was all fixed up.

He swung down to them with Gwen, who yanked a black shirt out of her bag. She shoved the shirt into the grip of Cyborg DD’s left hand. When he just held it up with a look of confusion on his face, she sighed and grabbed his wrist to make him press it to the cut on his head. Close up, Miles could see the differences to Red, and to Scarlet. Peni’s Daredevil was younger, like Miles’s, but his facial structure matched Red’s better. His irises were a darker blue than Red’s were. Like the other two, he was blind. His head tilted to follow their movements, but his eyes didn’t track.

“Where should we take him?” Miles asked Peni. “A doctor? A hospital?”

“I’m fine,” declared Cyborg DD, who was pretty obviously not fine. “Who are—?”

“We know a place,” interrupted Peni. “Follow us.”

With Cyborg DD held carefully in SP//dr’s non-dominant arm, she led them on a twisting path through the city. The hologram-billboards and LED signs all seemed to be in both English and Japanese, but Miles couldn’t exactly read either one and keep up with Peni. He thought he caught sight of a shrine tucked between a couple buildings they passed, and tried to use it as a landmark to remember their route. He was lost again after a minute, though – distracted by the bright lights and uniquely-shaped buildings that didn’t resemble the New York he knew. DD, however, seemed to have figured out the direction they were headed.

“We’re going to Foggy’s?” he asked, voice a little slurred but mostly coherent.

He tried to lift his right arm, but his hand jerked weirdly and made a horrible popping noise, so he lowered it back to his side again.

“That’s right,” agreed Peni.

“Foggy Nelson?” Peter asked. “Is he gonna be able to fix… All this?”

“Sure! No one has more experience patching DD up.”

And well, that made sense, Miles supposed. But he did have kind of a prickle at the back of his neck like maybe Peni wasn’t telling them the whole story. He kept that to himself though.

“So these are the people you met when you disappeared?” Cyborg DD asked, face angled towards where Peni sat inside SP//dr. “The, uh. The other spider… people?”

“Not all of them. This is Peter, Gwen, and Miles,” she explained.

“So not the pig, then.”

“No,” laughed Peni. “No, not the pig.”

“Good, that’s… It’s been a weird enough day already. Don’t think I could’a handled the pig.”

Fair enough. Miles had been having a pretty weird day himself when he first met Ham and it hadn’t helped the situation at all. If he’d been bleeding from a head wound at the time, he’d probably have thought Ham was a hallucination.

“Your friends smell weird,” DD informed Peni then, out of nowhere. “Like ozone.”

“That’s from the dimension-hopping,” said Peni. “It’ll wear off.”

Miles sniffed himself subtly as he continued swinging through the streets. Nothing. Well, ok, maybe a little burger grease. But not even any BO or anything! Which was great because he was a little sweaty from freaking out about maybe kinda almost killing Cyborg DD.

“You don’t smell, Miles,” Gwen said, amused. “He’s just weird.”

“He’s much cooler normally,” Peni assured them, and Miles was pretty sure DD mumbled something about ‘kids these days’. “You just did kind of a number on him, Miles.”

He cringed.

“Uh… Sorry?”

“We’ll get him fixed up, don’t worry. He’ll think it’s funny in a few hours.” Miles kind of hoped so, because he did _not_ want this spiky dude coming after him with that scary gravelly ‘gonna kick your butt’ voice again. “Here, we’re here.”

SP//dr dropped from the sky into a crouch, curling Cyborg DD towards the chassis to keep him from getting jostled. Everyone else followed suit.

“This place?” Gwen asked skeptically, staring at the building in front of them.

Miles felt that. It was so… Plain. Kinda sketch looking if he was being honest. It’d make a good canvas though. Since there was no way in hell SP//dr was fitting through the door, Peter took Cyborg DD out of the robot’s grip, slinging the guy’s good arm over his shoulders. That meant he couldn’t really hold Gwen’s shirt to his head anymore, but since they were at their destination, she just took it back.

“Mm. This is the place,” Peni confirmed, stepping out of SP//dr.

There didn’t seem to be a buzzer or doorbell of any kind, despite the futuristic technology all around them in the city. And so, Miles knocked. Once, twice, three times. He paused to wait for an answer, but there wasn’t one. Troubled, he glanced back at the others.

“He won’t... He won’t come to the door for me,” Cyborg DD said, pained, arm still limp with fingers spasming erratically.

“Sure he will,” Peter soothed, heaving the guy a little higher again as he started to slump over. “Come on, buddy, this is Foggy Nelson we’re talking about. Miles, keep knocking.”

So Miles did what he was told, knocking loudly and continually until there was a shout from the other side of the metal.

“ _Yamero_! I’m coming! Hold your horses, for chrissake.”

With a clang, the door opened, and there stood… Foggy Nelson?

His hair was super long — even longer than Ms. Nelson’s — but the same sandy blond-ish color, lighter than Peter’s Mr. Nelson. Some of it was pulled back in a messy bun. He wore mechanic’s coveralls, had grease stains on his face, and carried a wrench in one hand.

Oh, and he had a beard.

Which was. Just. It worked for him, kinda, Miles supposed, but he couldn’t imagine, say, Red’s Foggy with a beard. Or Gwen’s DA Nelson. Like, at all. Miles was distracted from the beard only because when this Mr. Nelson stepped back from the open door, it was with a noticeable limp. A golden retriever jingled up to his side and stayed there very patiently, even though it was obviously excited to see DD — its whole body strained towards him as much as possible; its ears were perked and its tail was wagging wildly. In contrast, Mr. Nelson took in the sight of DD — slumped against Peter, helmet off with blood dripping down his face, arm and leg both sparking — with something like horror.

“Foggy...” Cyborg DD mumbled.

“No. Nope. Nope, no. Oscorp has mechanics and doctors both on staff. Nope. This is not my job, and I am not going to deal with—”

“Fogs you’re wearing your ring,” DD said, wondering and pleased, with a dazed, dopey smile. “Can smell it.”

Miles wasn’t sure he was ever going to get used to the idea of any of DD’s weird sensory... Things. It was bad enough learning about the specifics from Peter and realizing how much his own Daredevil might have figured out. Senses that strong were super invasive just by nature, so he couldn’t imagine Gwen having to deal with her Murdock using them for evil.

Mr. Nelson paled and looked down at his left hand, the one without the wrench, startled. Cyborg DD was right — there was a ring glinting there, silver with a stripe of gold through the center, set with three glowing gemstones.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Mr. Nelson hissed.

“Can’t you help him?” Miles asked, to get them all back on track. “It’s my fault he’s hurt, I didn’t mean to, and I just—”

Mr. Nelson turned a glare on Miles, and for half a second it was genuinely scary. But then he started back in surprise.

“You’re just a kid.”

“And _he’s_ just bleeding from a head wound,” Gwen added pointedly, gesturing at DD.

Apparently meeting Red had at least changed her mind about Matt Murdocks enough to let her give this one the benefit of the doubt.

“Please, Doc...?” Peni added, and her robot gave the biggest sad puppy eyes Miles had ever seen.

With a groan, Mr. Nelson tangled a hand in his tied-back hair.

“Fine. Fine! Bring him in, why not, what dignity did I even have left anyway.”

Still grumbling, he stormed back inside, leaning heavily on the railing of the stairs and followed faithfully by his dog — but left the door open for them. Miles exchanged shrugs with Peter and Gwen, and they all turned to Peni.

“It’ll be ok now,” she promised sweetly, skipping after Mr. Nelson and leaving SP//dr to stand watch outside.

She would know best, Miles supposed — it was her universe, after all. He followed her down the stairs into the well-lit basement below, tugging off his mask and stuffing it in the same pocket as his phone.

“Doc?” he asked halfway down the flight of steps.

“Mmhmm,” confirmed Peni. “He fixes lots of people up, not just Matt. So everyone calls him Doc Nelson.”

There was definitely more Miles wanted to know about _that_ , but before he could get another question out, they’d reached the bottom of the staircase.

The basement was huge, more like a big garage or a warehouse than anything. There was a row of workbenches covered in bits and bobs pushed up against the wall, a big metal frame suspended on chains in the corner, and a large examination table in the center of the room. Some cabinets and a desk made up the opposite wall, and there was a dog bed by the foot of the desk that the golden retriever had already curled up in, tucking its nose into its tail but watching the stairs eagerly. On the far end of the basement was a door with a large mat, a shoe rack, and a box of slippers in front of it. The entrance to a living area, maybe?

Doc Nelson was muttering to himself and yanking things off the wall with his left hand while his right gripped a pole that ran along the perimeter of the basement at about railing height. Peni zipped to his side to offer suggestions. Gwen reached the basement next, and took off her mask as well, combing a hand through her hair to get her part back in order.

“Whoa,” she muttered.

“ _Right?_ ” agreed Miles.

“Put him on the table,” Doc Nelson told Peter with a jerk of his head, the second he and DD had also shuffled their way to the bottom of the staircase.

The last thing Doc Nelson grabbed was a first aid kit, which he snapped open on a small bench next to the exam table. Miles helped Peter haul Cyborg DD up to sit on the table as instructed and the doc immediately shooed them away. Then he gripped DD’s chin with one hand and started cleaning his head wound with the other, leaning hard against the table with his right hip.

“Thanks, Fogs,” DD murmured, and was ignored.

Doc’s movements were efficient, not quite gentle. And yet… The irritation smoothed off his face as he worked. And there. There, for the first time, Doc Nelson looked more like the Foggy Nelson that Miles was familiar with. Soft but strong. Determined but kind. Hopelessly in love. Miles almost expected the guy to press a kiss to DD’s forehead after wrapping it in clean white gauze. He didn’t, but there was like, this weird pause before he pulled back where it really _seemed_ like maybe…

And then he straightened up and turned towards their ragtag group, hands on his hips.

“So, who the hell are you three, anyway?”

Considering how much trouble Peter got in with Red about the whole bringing friends from different dimensions thing, Miles was pretty sure he should play dumb. He didn’t want Peni to get yelled at or anything.

“Uhhh...”

“This is Peter, Miles, and Gwen,” Peni explained, gesturing to each of them before Miles’s brain had a chance to come up with anything. “They’re Spider-people from alternate universes. And my friends.”

Doc Nelson took a deep breath in, held it, then let it out.

“Right,” he said, very calm. “Sure. I remember. Multiverse. Spider-people. Well. Uh. Welcome, I guess.” He turned back towards DD, setting aside the first aid kit and spreading his tools out instead. “I’m Foggy Nelson, but you can just call me Doc if you want, everyone else does.”

“Thanks, Doc,” Miles said, under the nagging compulsion of his Mami’s voice in the back of his head to ‘be polite’. “I mean, for uh, taking a look at him.”

“Well, you did come all the way out here,” Doc Nelson sighed. “Alright, let’s take these off…”

He unbuckled the spiky pauldrons from DD’s shoulders and tossed them aside, and the knee pads followed soon after. Doc Nelson froze for a second after peeling away Cyborg DD’s gloves, but Miles couldn’t tell what he was looking at before he moved again.

“Foggy. Foggy, your heart did a thing. Fog. Foggy,” DD insisted, concerned and delirious as he shoved the palm of his flesh and blood hand — the left one, which also had what Miles was now pretty sure was a wedding ring on it — against Doc Nelson’s chest.

Doc Nelson smacked DD’s hand aside and started peeling back his suit to get at the shoulder of his robot arm.

“God you’re insufferable,” he grumbled. “Stop listening to my heart, dumbass, you’re the one whose limbs are going off like sparklers.”

Finally, past Cyborg DD’s panicked flailing, Doc Nelson managed to get the top half of the suit off. Turned out, the robot arm only extended to the elbow, not all the way to the shoulder joint like Miles had imagined it would. But what was most fascinating about the arm was that it finally provided the one thing that had so far been missing from Peni’s Daredevil – the color red. Beneath the clear casing covering the top of DD’s forearm ran a maze of glowing red circuit lines, as bright as laser beams. They were flickering oddly, a counterpoint to the sparks running all up and down the arm.

“Lovely,” Doc Nelson muttered under his breath. “Shit.”

Miles cringed.

“Sorry. I. I didn’t mean to.”

That put a pause to the doc’s ministrations. He looked over at Miles, brows furrowed.

“How did _you_ short out his arm?” he asked.

“Uhhhh...”

At a loss for how else to explain, Miles held up his hands and let a little of the blue electricity of his venom strike build up in them.

“Holy shit. Ok, we’re just gonna… Set that aside for now.”

Turning back to his work again, the doc pressed some sort of hidden latch, and the glass casing on DD’s robotic arm popped open to allow access to the circuitry below. As he began to make adjustments, he asked Peni careful questions about how she’d been, and made subtle inquiries about Miles, Gwen, and Peter as well.

It was easy to get sucked into conversation with him, and it took a while to notice that there was one person in the room who wasn’t speaking. Infra-Red, it turned out, was kind of a quiet guy. He was letting Doc Nelson ask all the questions, but he had his head tilted like Scarlet always did, listening for the answers. And whether they were truthful or not.

Miles… Did not like that. But this guy was Peni’s Daredevil, and she trusted him like Miles trusted Scarlet. That’d have to be enough.

“We’re getting into the nerves now, Matt,” Doc Nelson said quietly as the conversation dwindled. “Find something to bite down on.”

DD nodded, patting around the table with his good hand until he found one of his gloves and then shoving it between his teeth. When he set his hand back down on the table, Peni grabbed it and gave it a squeeze. DD didn’t squeeze back; he left his hand loose and lax around Peni’s, even as Doc Nelson began working again and color drained from his face. Miles could still see his metal fingers twitching out of control, but Doc Nelson had braced the hand to the table to keep it steady. Breathing slow and deep, Cyborg DD closed his eyes. A fine tremor was running through his whole body.

Even though he was trying to hide it, it was pretty clear the pain was getting to him. He needed a distraction.

Peni must have been thinking the same thing, because after latching on to DD’s flesh and blood hand, she very loudly asked them how their visit to B’s universe had gone. Gwen told her about Deadpool with great zeal, and mentioned how old everybody was there. She also explained their new Daredevil naming convention. Even though his face was pale and sweaty with pain and he was still biting down on his glove for all he was worth, Cyborg DD managed to quirk a red brow at the topic.

“That sounds like fun!” Peni said. “You’re doing one for my Matt too, right? What’s it gonna be?”

“Not sure yet,” replied Gwen. “Miles?”

“The only red on him is kinda glowy, like everything else around here, so… Infra-Red? Maybe?” Miles suggested, shrugging. “You know, like those security system laser beams in heist movies and stuff.”

“Works for me,” said Peter. “I can remember that.”

“It’s not technically accurate to the makeup of his arm, but… I like it,” Peni agreed. “Matt?”

They all turned towards DD, then, and past the glove Miles could see the corner of his mouth quirked upwards. He shrugged with his left shoulder, probably so he wouldn’t jostle Doc Nelson, who was still poking through the no-longer-sparking guts of DD’s robot arm.

“And you’re clear,” Doc said suddenly, pulling away. “The rest is cosmetic damage, so it should be painless.”

With a grateful nod, DD spit his glove out and into his right hand. His left he slipped out of Peni’s to rub his forearm against his mouth and forehead.

“Thanks. Uh, about the name,” he said, voice rough. “It’s fine with me. Whatever makes things easier for you.”

And so it was settled. Miles added Infra-Red to his list of Daredevils alongside Scarlet and Red.

“Not bad, Miles,” Gwen complimented, giving him a light sock on the arm.

He grinned and straightened his posture.

“Thanks. I do pretty good with color names, if I do say so myself.”

“It’s an artist thing,” Peni explained to a baffled-looking Infra-Red.

* * *

Once he was finished fixing the last few faults in Infra-Red’s arm, Doc Nelson ordered him to swing his legs up onto the exam table for easier access. Infra-Red followed the direction without hesitation. As Doc Nelson tugged off the left boot and rolled up the leg on Infra-Red’s suit, it revealed more and more metal. The prosthetic went about halfway up his thigh.

But when the doc picked up his tools to begin, he couldn’t seem to find a good angle on the leg. He tried two or three different positions around the table without success. Then, with a flirty expression, Infra-Red lifted his leg, extended like some kinda yoga pose. Doc Nelson scoffed.

“As if you could hold it like that the entire time,” he muttered. “Put that damn thing down, I’ll just adjust the…”

He flipped a switch on the side of the table. Nothing happened. He flipped it again. Still nothing. Then, grumbling, he bent over a little, grabbing the side of the table and leaning heavily on his right side. Miles could make out a knob just past his straining fingers.

“Stupid. Thing,” Doc muttered, struggling to reach for the table’s manual lift mechanism while keeping his weight off his left leg.

Just about everybody in the room took a step forward to offer help, but then with a click the table began to rise. Doc Nelson didn’t waste a second returning to his work. He popped open the front of Infra-Red’s shin and dove right in. Hands behind her back, Peni casually meandered the room, going up on her tiptoes and ducking low to get a view of everything. She returned to the table after a minute, looking like she hadn’t found what she was searching for.

“Did you throw out your cane again?” she asked, her voice going disapproving and stern.

Doc grumbled something about preachy, know-it-all kids under his breath, tightening something with the wrench in his hand before sticking it in his mouth to continue working at a cluster of wires with his fingers.

“Cane?” asked Gwen.

“Yeah. Got a cane around here somewhere I should probably still be using,” Doc Nelson muttered, muffled by the wrench clenched between his teeth like a pirate’s knife or a dog’s bone. “But I’ve got enough tables and railings to lean on, and I just don’t want to.”

Peni huffed and returned to her search.

There was a sudden spark, and the doc jerked back from where he had been fiddling with the wires inside Infra-Red’s prosthetic leg. The wrench dropped from his mouth and clattered onto the floor.

“Son of a—”

His left leg gave out from under him and Miles, who was closest, caught him under the arms. It took a couple seconds to get him upright and steady again, but at last Doc Nelson pulled himself out of Miles’s hold and leaned up against the exam table.

“You ok?” Miles asked him.

“Yeah, kid, I’m fine, just need...” And then suddenly Peni was at the doc’s elbow, holding out a tool that Miles couldn’t even begin to guess the purpose of. “Yeah, that. Thanks.”

He used the whatever-it-was to seal the wire that had shocked him back up so it wasn’t exposed. The next thing Peni presented Doc Nelson with was a cane, which he sneered at. She poked him with it.

“Just take the cane, Fogs,” Infra-Red urged. “After all the times you yelled at me for not taking care of my injuries—”

“Yeah, god forbid I be a hypocrite,” retorted Doc Nelson bitterly.

Infra-Red jerked back like he’d been slapped. Doc continued working without another word. Miles, feeling like he was walking on eggshells, bent down and grabbed the dropped wrench to set back on the worktable.

“Ok, _what_ is this energy?” Gwen demanded with her hands on her hips.

Doc’s face went even more sour. Infra-Red fidgeted with the ring on his finger. Neither one seemed inclined to answer. Peter cleared his throat.

“Uh, maybe we should—”

“They’re divorced,” explained Peni, who seemed to be very purposely ignoring the expressions both men were shooting her.

Divorced. That explained it, Miles supposed – why Infra-Red would think Doc Nelson wouldn’t want to see him, the surprise at Doc wearing his wedding ring. The thought of Ms. Nelson and Ms. Murdock separating the same way made Miles’s heart squeeze.

“Divorced, huh? Is it because of whatever happened to your leg? Because you got hurt?” Gwen asked, turned away from all of them with her hands clasped behind her back as she studied a wall of tools.

Doc Nelson sighed, turning over the tool in his hand.

“You kids really are a bunch of nosy little brats, aren’t you?” he asked. “What’s it to you, anyway?”

Gwen shrugged instead of answering.

“Let’s not pry,” Peter finally asserted again. “It’s none of our business and it’s not what we’re here for.”

One of Doc Nelson’s brows quirked upward.

“And what exactly _are_ you here for?” he asked.

A long and awkward silence followed.

“They’re here to prove Matt’s not a bad guy,” Peni explained when no one else did, yet again.

“What,” asked Doc Nelson, sealing up the casing on Infra-Red’s leg and giving it a final pat, “like a villain? Of course he’s not. Why would they think that?”

“No reason,” Gwen insisted hurriedly, probably to head things off before Peni could mention Murderdock.

“Well,” said Infra-Red, shrugging back into the top half of his suit and rolling down his pant leg. “That’s not suspicious.”

But he didn’t press about it, which was good. Well, except for the awkward silence part of the equation, that wasn’t so great. Peni coughed.

“Now that you’re done working,” she directed at Doc Nelson, rocking back and forth on her heels with her hands clasped behind her back.

“The konpeito are in the middle drawer,” Doc sighed. “Don’t spoil your appetite for dinner, your aunt and uncle will kill me.”

With a big grin on her face, Peni skipped over to the desk and pulled out a bag of colorful candy. Then she plopped down next to Doc Nelson’s dog and started petting him as she crunched her way through the sugary little stars. A snack sounded good to Miles, so he pulled a granola bar out of his bag to eat.

Gwen made her way over to Peni, shuffling casually like she was just exploring the place, patting the dog’s yellow head absently as she passed – but she kept circling back in a smaller and smaller orbit until she finally gave in and knelt on the floor, snuggling the dog while he thumped his fluffy golden tail.

“His name is Marshall,” Peni told her. “He likes it when you scratch behind his ears.”

Gwen took this advice to heart, giving Marshall a good ear-skritch.

“Fogs, ‘m tired,” Infra-Red said past a yawn.

“Then go the hell to sleep, Matt.”

Infra-Red’s face pulled into a pout – the exact same one Miles had seen on Scarlet. But he was already easing himself down on the exam table and his blue eyes were already slipping shut. Soon his mouth was slack with sleep.

“Is it ok to let him conk out like that, with a head wound?” asked Peter, stepping up next to the table.

“He’ll be fine,” Doc Nelson murmured. “Just needs some rest.”

And then he stroked the fingers of his left hand lightly through the fringes of Infra-Red’s bloodied, sweat-soaked hair. After a few seconds, he seemed to realize what he was doing and yanked his hand away. As he did, the ring there caught Miles’s attention again.

The gems on it didn’t just glitter and sparkle, they glowed from within, emitting multicolored, opalescent light like something out of a sci-fi story. But then, from what Miles had seen, Peni’s whole dimension was like something out of a sci-fi story.

“What are they?” he blurted before he could think better of it. “Those stones in your ring?”

Doc Nelson didn’t seem bothered by the question, even if he did fiddle with the ring again like he wanted to take it off.

“Hoshi-no-tama.”

Miles… Had no idea what that was.

“Like kitsune carry around?” Gwen asked suddenly.

When Miles turned towards her, he jumped – instead of across the room with Peni and the dog, she was standing right next to him. He lifted his eyebrows at her, kind of a silent ‘ _what_ , now?’ and Gwen fiddled with the strap of her backpack.

“Pete— a friend of mine. Was big into legendary creatures from around the world. Dragons. Stuff like that. Just, you know, picked some of it up.”

“The name is based on that,” Peni said. “The kitsune, fox spirits, carry around white orbs that glow called hoshi-no-tama. It means star ball but sometimes they’re more like pearls, or crystals, that sort of thing. So, since these gems glow…”

The name seemed natural. Miles nodded and glanced over at her.

Peni and the dog were both on their feet, pushing a rolling chair that Miles was pretty sure had been set behind Doc Nelson’s desk before. Peni also had Doc’s seven-shaped cane in her hand. After being glared at by both girl and dog, Doc accepted both. He dropped into the chair with a groan and set the cane between his legs, fidgeting with it. Marshall wagged his tail and sidled in close.

“A Stark-Fujikawa drilling team discovered them something like fifty years ago when they were looking for energy sources,” Doc added. “Kind of caught on in the diamond industry instead, but with corporations that big, money in is money in. They pivoted and opened a damn jewelry line. So, when we…” He twisted his ring, sighed. “When Matt and I got married, I splurged on them. There were people who thought it was insensitive, of course — why get hoshi-no-tama for someone who could never enjoy them? But the truth is that they give off heat. Not much, not so much that I can feel it, but Matt can. And I thought... I thought, I wanted him to have something warm that he could experience in his own way.”

Miles cleared his throat. He was not gonna get all choked up about this. Really. Gwen and Peni would tease him forever.

“That’s. Um. That’s really sweet, Doc.”

“Yeah, well, that’s me, a consummate romantic,” Doc muttered in reply, good mood gone as fast as it came.

“Don’t you think—” Gwen started, but was interrupted by a banging coming from up the stairs.

“Doc! Doc Nelson!” someone called through the door, sounding frantic.

Doc’s head jerked up, Infra-Red jolted into awareness, and both moved to get to their feet to grab the door. Peni gave each of them a pat on the arm and hurried up the stairs herself. Soon after, she came back down with a man on her heels. His hair was gray, and he looked like a mess – shirt untucked, glasses askew, one shoe untied. There was a little kid curled in his arms, probably six-ish and shaking like a leaf.

“Nakamura. Wasn’t expecting you back until October. What happened?” Doc asked gruffly, levering himself up with his cane.

“It’s Sweeney’s men. They. They locked down functionality on the implant until we pay back the loan. But I don’t have the money this month, not to pay all of it at once, and she—”

“Daddy, I can’t see,” the little girl whimpered.

Still sitting on the exam table, Infra-Red’s already pale face went chalk-white.

“It’s her occipital implant, Matt,” Doc Nelson narrated almost gently, glancing back at him. “It’s just the implant. She’ll be ok.” He placed a callused hand atop the girl’s head. “Hey. Sachiko, sweetheart, can you hear me? Just gimme a sec, I’m gonna get you out of the dark, ok?”

Mr. Nakamura looked briefly over at Infra-Red, but didn’t give him a second glance even though it seemed like he recognized him. Miles wondered if Infra-Red’s identity was common knowledge in Peni’s world or what. Thinking about secret identities reminded him that his own was on full display, but— well, this wasn’t his universe, and anyway Mr. Nakamura didn’t pay him or Gwen or Peter any attention. Maybe he was used to seeing Doc Nelson with weird guests.

By the time Miles shrugged off this thought, the doc had made his way over to his desk, leaning heavily on his cane, and plucked a device of some sort out of the mess. It looked a little like an old handheld game console – rectangular, small screen, a bunch of weird buttons. It also had a cord running off the end. He brought it back over, cane thumping heavily against the concrete floor.

Then, at the doc’s request, Mr. Nakamura swept the back of his daughter’s hair up – and off. A hairpiece, Miles realized. Beneath it, the back section of her skull was metal and blinking with unpleasant-looking orange lights.

“Just gonna feel a weird little click now, ok?” Doc narrated.

Sachiko nodded. Then, slowly, Doc Nelson plugged the cord into the back of Sachiko’s head. Miles shivered. There were a few beeps from the device in Doc Nelson’s hand, and he studied it. Pushed a button. A different one. A third.

Finally, he sucked a breath in through his teeth.

“Ah, shi—” He caught himself. “Ships. This is the new encryption.”

“You can fix it though?” Mr. Nakamura asked, dread seeping into his voice. “Can’t you?”

“Absolutely. Just need a little assistance. Hold on… Sam!” Doc called towards the door at the far end of the basement, one hand cupped around his mouth. “Sammy!”

A dark-haired teen tumbled out the door with half of what Miles thought was a pork bun in his mouth. He stepped out of his slippers and stuffed his feet into a pair of sneakers before hurrying over, leaving the laces untied.

Miles respected that.

“What’s up, boss?” the guy, presumably Sam, asked after swallowing the last of the bun. “New encryption again?”

“Yeah, could you…?”

Sam offered a casual, joking salute that ruffled his black bangs.

“Yup! On it.”

Sam danced around the place like he could walk it blindfolded, giving the golden retriever a pat as he snagged a laptop from a drawer in Doc Nelson’s desk. He also plucked a cable off the wall without looking at it before moving over to the little circle of Doc and the Nakamuras. For several minutes, Sam studied whatever readings were on Doc Nelson’s device, nodding to himself, and typing on his laptop.

“Ok,” he said when he was done. “Got it.”

Then he and Doc Nelson gently talked Sachiko through swapping out cords, so that Sam’s laptop was plugged into the machinery at the back of her head instead. One arm cradling the laptop, he began to type, fingers flying over the number pad.

“Do you think that’s the same Sam as…?” Gwen whispered as they watched him work.

Miles shrugged. Maybe? With a last name like Chung, the Sam in Peter’s universe probably had some Chinese heritage, and this guy looked like he did too, but… They’d never met him. No way to tell.

“Peter?”

“Mmm, yeah, I’d say so,” Peter replied. “A lot younger, but he looks like the Sam Chung I know.”

“ _So_ , uh… Who are all these people, boss?” Sam asked loudly as he plugged numbers into the laptop at a speed that made Miles dizzy.

It was pretty clear from his tone that he’d overheard them. Miles cringed.

“Peni’s friends. From, ah.” Doc cleared his throat. “ _Out of town_.”

At those words, Sam looked up from his typing, barely even slowing down, and gave Miles, Gwen, and Peter a good long suspicious squint.

“Huh.” Shaking his head, he added three more digits, then looked over his work. “Ok, parameters set. You’re gonna feel a little buzz, starshine.”

“Squeeze my hand if it hurts,” Doc told Sachiko, pressing a couple of his fingers into her small hand.

She nodded, snuggling closer into her father’s arms with her eyes squeezed tight shut. Sam tapped the Enter key. For several seconds there was nothing, and then the silence was broken by a quiet whir of machinery. The lights in Sachiko’s implant turned from orange to blue.

“Ok. We’re in,” narrated Sam. “Now, I just have to… Turn this back on here… And here… And… Ok. Go ahead and open your eyes, Sachiko.”

She opened first one, then the other, cautiously, and blinked a few times with big dark eyes.

“Did Mr. Daredevil need fixed today too?” she asked first, staring right at Infra-Red, who offered her a wave.

“Something like that,” said Doc Nelson, whose voice was a bit too overly bright to be convincing.

Only then did Sam seem to notice the guy sitting on the exam table. He sucked in a breath through his teeth.

“Oh, uh. Hey. Didn’t see you there, DD.”

“Well,” replied Infra-Red, “to be frank I didn’t see you either, so I guess we’re even.”

There was a kind of tension between them, but Miles figured that made sense. If Sam was working for Doc Nelson, that put him in a weird place talking to, like, his mentor or boss or whatever’s ex. After a couple seconds of awkward silence, Sam turned back towards the Nakamuras, to help get everything unplugged so Sachiko’s hairpiece could go back on.

Once settled, she was very insistent that she wanted down, immediately, she was not a baby and didn’t need to be carried. A spitfire was emerging, Miles thought to himself fondly.

“Tell you what,” Sam said, crouching down to Sachiko’s level. “That was pretty scary, but I know where the doc keeps his candy. How about we go steal some?”

“I was _not_ scared!” Sachiko scolded.

She puffed out her cheeks a little and crossed her arms.

“Yeah. You’re a tough little monkey wrench, huh,” Sam agreed, ruffling her bangs.

She tried to hold it back for a couple of seconds, but eventually a laugh burst from Sachiko’s lips and wiped her pout away.

“Monkeys don’t use a _wrench_!” she insisted, grinning.

Sam smiled right back and gave Sachiko a fist bump. Miles made a quick little note in his phone to try and track down the Sam in his own universe. It seemed like it’d be worthwhile.

While Doc and Mr. Nakamura haggled over whether there would be money exchanging hands for this service – Doc Nelson arguing against, and Mr. Nakamura for – Sachiko played with Marshall. When a payment was agreed upon, lower than normal rate but to go all to Sam, the two shifted seamlessly into regular conversation. Mr. Nakamura’s mother’s health, the new restaurant a few blocks down, the rising price of eggs.

“You two thinking of getting back together?” Mr. Nakamura asked slyly after a few minutes, nodding towards Infra-Red and then gesturing with a hand at the wedding ring still on Doc Nelson’s finger. “The whole neighborhood would be happy to get a wedding invitation.”

But in response, Doc tugged off the ring and shoved it into a pocket.

“No,” he said roughly, with a hunted look. “No. That’s done with. For good.”

Miles couldn’t hear heartbeats or anything but... It sure seemed like a lie to him. Especially after the soft look that had come into Doc Nelson’s eyes when he’d been tending to Infra-Red’s head wound. Back on the exam table, Infra-Red’s expression was pained and longing. There was pretty obviously some love-feelings on his side. But even though Miles was sure there were some on the doc’s side too, he was still saying no. It didn’t make any _sense_. What was keeping them apart?

Everyone waved off the Nakamuras as they went on their way, but Mr. Nakamura’s words seemed to linger in the air like a bad smell. It was quiet, and awkward, and Doc’s posture was tense.

“Well. Now that that’s all done and everyone’s awake,” Peter said, breaking the silence and putting a hand between Gwen’s shoulder blades to nudge her forward, “why don’t you and Infra-Red have a chat, Gwen?”

The guy in question tilted his head.

“Sure,” he agreed. “I could go for a chat.”

“Or you could leave,” Doc said, rustling around on one of his workbenches and not facing anyone.

His voice shook on the last word.

“Foggy—”

“Look, I know you guys have a whole thing, but we’re already gathered here, can’t you just give us a minute to talk to him?” Gwen asked. “This is literally the entire reason we’re in this dimension at all.”

“Please?” Peni added.

She put a hand on Doc Nelson’s arm, and he shrugged her off.

“You wanna talk to him?” he spat. “Then talk. I need a smoke.”

Doc Nelson made right for the stairs and didn’t bother to go back for his cane. His steps were loud, and angry, and uneven. Marshall hopped up out of Peni’s loving arms to follow him. A few seconds later, the door above the stairs closed with a bang, and Marshall made a very sad whimpering noise. There was a scrape or two like he was pawing at the door. Sam whistled and stuffed his hands in his pockets.

“That really did it.”

He didn’t make any move to follow, though.

“Shouldn’t, uh… Shouldn’t someone go after him?” Miles asked the room at large.

But Sam shook his head.

“He likes to cool off alone. It’s how he deals with stuff.”

If he was living at Doc Nelson’s place, he probably knew best. But. Miles just didn’t feel right, leaving it like that. Not when he thought about Ms. Nelson and Ms. Murdock cheerfully teasing each other, or the way Red and Mr. Nelson finished each other’s thoughts. It was like… Maybe, maybe Doc and Infra-Red just needed a little push, right? So as Peni coaxed Marshall back down the stairs, Miles climbed them.

Once at the top, he peeked out the door. There, looming next to the building, was SP//dr. In its shadow stood Doc Nelson with a cigarette. He fiddled with it, tapped the end against his lip like he was about to inhale, but didn’t light it. With his other hand, resting loosely, near his thigh, Doc clicked a lighter over and over.

“Hey, um,” Miles greeted, stepping fully outside and shoving his hands in the pockets of his hoodie.

Doc Nelson glanced at him and sighed.

“Thought you came here to see Matt,” he pointed out.

Miles shrugged.

“That’s, uh, that’s mostly for Gwen. I mean, I. I already know a Daredevil in my world. She’s a lady. Actually, you’re a lady too. Both ladies. I think they’re married?” He was rambling. “Anyway. What I mean is, uh, are you doing ok?”

“Wow.” Doc lifted a single brow; it was very judgmental. “Subtle.”

“You are not very nice, you know that?” Miles asked, squinting.

“Yeah, I get that a lot.”

They were silent for several minutes. Miles watched the lighter as it click-click-clicked, and decided to just dive right in.

“About you and Infra-Red, I mean… You guys… Do you think you’ll ever work it out?” he asked.

“Your ears work, don’t they? You heard what I told Nakamura about that.”

“But I don’t understand,” Miles pressed. “He clearly loves you. And you love him! I can tell you do!”

“I respect that you know a version of me in your own world,” Doc Nelson said, voice carefully calm, “but I’m not that person. You don’t know me, and I don’t know you. And the details of my personal life are, frankly, none of your business.”

Miles cringed.

“I. I’m sorry,” he apologized.

Doc Nelson sighed.

“Just… Don’t. Ok?” He finally stuffed the lighter in his left pocket, returned the unused cigarette to the box in his right, and began absently massaging his left leg with both hands. “You’re Peni’s friend, and there are things I’m happy to talk about that I normally wouldn’t with a stranger because of that. But this isn’t one of those things. It’s between me and Matt.”

“I’m sorry,” Miles repeated. “I really am. I just wanted… Ms. Nelson and Ms. Murdock, in my world, they. They really helped me out. I know you’re not the same as them, but I want…”

“I know what you want,” Doc Nelson said. “But you don’t know what I want, even if you think you do. This? This is none of your business. You don’t get to come in here and meddle with this just to satisfy your own feelings. I don’t need to justify my life choices to anyone, and I’m sick of being expected to.”

That was the last word on the subject and Miles knew it. He retreated back inside.

It seemed like whatever conversation had happened there, it had gone a lot better. Everyone was chill – Peni and Sam were petting Marshall and chatting quietly, Peter was leaning against a wall watching over everyone, and Gwen had hopped up on the examination table to sit next to Infra-Red. Just by her relaxed posture, Miles could tell she and Infra-Red were a lot tighter than they had been before.

“We had a talk,” Gwen explained with a shrug when he asked about it. “It was… Illuminating.”

Which was super vague. But pressing her about it after he’d just stuck his foot in his mouth by prying about Doc and Infra-Red’s divorce would be… Bad. Anyway, Gwen seemed content, and that was good.

“Ready to head out, gang?” Peter asked, stretching.

“You could stick around for dinner,” offered Sam.

A throat cleared from behind them. Miles almost didn’t do it, but he glanced back and caught sight of Doc Nelson’s irritated face.

“We… Should probably go,” Peter said slowly, glancing between Miles and the doc.

Miles let out a quiet sigh of relief. Doc Nelson wanted to see the back of them, thanks to Miles, and he didn’t seem like he’d be shy about kicking them out. Miles really, really did not want it to come to that.

And then his stomach growled.

 _Stomach no_ , Miles groaned internally. He pressed his hands over it to try and get it to shut up. Was everyone staring at him? He was pretty sure everyone was staring at him. There was a loud sigh from the stairs.

“Sammy, why don’t you grab them something for the road,” Doc Nelson said.

* * *

In the end it took them about twenty minutes longer to leave than it probably should have. But they were leaving loaded down with six tupperwares of food – well, closer to five, since Miles steadily ate his way through one full of fried rice while goodbyes were said. Sam thought this was ‘cute’ apparently, and insisted that Miles needed to eat more to keep growing. Miles was not sure what to make of that _at all_ , like, those were some abuelita words coming out of the mouth of a guy barely older than him.

But, well. He _was_ hungry. And that _was_ basically permission, right? So Miles chowed down. It also significantly lowered his chances of sticking his foot in his mouth again.

“See you around, kid,” Infra-Red said to Gwen when their little group finally started heading for the exit.

He was up on his feet again, looking spry and intimidatingly huge even without all his spiky hardware.

“No you won’t,” Gwen told him, and a huge grin spread across his face at the joke.

“No,” he agreed, pleased. “I won’t. But come back and visit sometime anyway.”

“Ughhh _no_! Out, out, out! Do not encourage him,” scolded Peni, pushing Gwen towards the stairs. “I’m the one who has to deal with the jokes after you leave.”

“I’m going, I’m going!”

After waving goodbye, Gwen tugged her mask back on and led the charge up the stairs. Miles half followed suit – keeping his mask pulled up above his nose until he’d finished the bite of rice in his mouth. He called one last, last, for really real this time goodbye to Peni, and waved to the others before they were out of sight behind the stairwell.

“Last stop,” Peter announced when the door to Doc Nelson’s place closed behind the three of them, setting his dimension watch. “Ham’s world. We’ll crash there for the night, then get everyone home.”


	4. Chapter 4

Gwen had never actually been to Ham’s universe – too caught up in her feud with what was apparently the multiverse’s worst Matt Murdock to make the time – but she was pretty sure they weren’t in it. For one thing, it wasn’t saturated enough. The world of a brightly-colored cartoon pig had to be just as brightly-colored, didn’t it? Reds and blues and yellows. A world where night was denoted by the presence of a crescent moon in the sky no matter when in the month it was. The view in front of her? Not that.

It was actually almost dull after the neon haze of Peni’s world.

“This,” Gwen said since apparently no one else was gonna, putting her hands on her hips, “is definitely not Ham’s universe.”

“I put in the right number,” B insisted, but looked at his watch again anyway, and— “Oops.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” muttered Gwen.

“That’s fine, it’s fine, I’ll just fix it and—”

But Gwen didn’t want to jump right to Ham’s universe. She wanted to explore the one they were in. What better test than a universe none of them had ever been to before? She wanted to see the Matt Murdock from this world.

The other two were not as on board with the idea.

“I dunno,” Miles said, uneasily. “What if this is, like, a zombie dimension?”

“What if it’s a cool dimension full of music you’ve never heard before?” countered Gwen.

That stumped him. _Cool new music_ , Gwen thought to herself, _gets ‘em every time_. B was a tougher cookie, probably because he felt like he had to be a responsible adult. She managed to wheedle him into a fifteen-minute search – if they didn’t get a lead by then, they’d hop to Ham’s universe.

Luckily, it didn’t even take five to get a bead on the city’s superhero population – almost as soon as they’d started looking, there was a whoop from up above. Gwen craned her neck and saw not one, not two, but three other Spider-people swinging through the streets. One was small and kinda scrawny, mostly in blue. The second was much taller, wearing what looked like Gwen’s outfit but with the colors reversed. And the third’s outfit was mostly red with black detailing and palms.

Just as she was getting ready to shout, the little guy in blue jerked to a stop mid-swing. With an audible _thunk_ , he hit the glass of a window in the office building he was passing. The other two stopped and seemed to chat for a minute. Then, the guy in blue pointed, and all three of the unfamiliar Spider-people turned their masks on Gwen, B, and Miles.

That settled things real fast. The three of them made their way to street level in a flash. For his part, B seemed to decide he ought to look imposing and mentorly and shifted to loom from behind Gwen and Miles.

“Can we help you?” he asked as the strangers approached.

“I think,” said the tallest of the other group – the one in red and black – with Miles’s cadence but a much deeper voice, “that’s our question to ask. You’re kinda in our neighborhood.”

“Copycats?” the black-hooded Spider-Woman suggested to her teammates.

The mostly-blue Spider-Man shook his head.

“No, Gw— Ghost, they’re like us,” he said in a surprisingly mature voice – so, not a kid, just short. “I can feel it.”

 _Ghost_ stepped a little closer, tilted her head, and Gwen swallowed.

“You’re right… I can feel it too. RJ?”

Gwen blinked. She hadn’t been sure before after only one word, but… It was like hearing her voice recorded back at her, almost. Uncanny. Not quite right. Gwen’s stomach swooped. The woman in front of her, who had to be like, at least twenty… That was her. Another version of her. And the other two…

The big Spider-Man that sounded like Miles nodded, and the movement startled Gwen out of her train of thought.

“We’re the same,” he agreed. “But… How? I mean, did someone let loose a whole lab full of radioactive spiders or what?”

“Clones,” suggested Blue Spider-Man.

Ghost dropped her masked head in her hands.

“Cobalt, just because _you_ have clones doesn’t mean it’s any less astronomically unlikely anyone else has them.”

B’s hand tightened on Gwen’s shoulder, but it wasn’t enough to hurt so she didn’t shake him off.

“We’re actually just looking for someone, and then we’ll be out of your hair,” he promised with some seriously thin false cheer.

“Tell us who you are first,” said RJ, tilting his head.

Gwen looked up at B. So did Miles. After five long seconds, B’s shoulders drooped.

“Yeah, alright,” he muttered, scrubbing his hands down his masked face.

“I uh.” Miles cleared his throat. “I think maybe we’re _you_? Like, from an alternate universe and stuff.”

Cobalt let out a noise kind of like a whistling tea kettle.

* * *

The situation devolved rapidly from there. Cobalt was insistent – to the point of begging and pleading – that they come back to ‘base’. Eventually, Ghost just told them point blank that he’d be insufferable forever unless they agreed. B wasn’t too hot on the idea, but Gwen got that. It was weird enough meeting an older double of yourself, and after Miles’s Peter and hearing about Gwen’s, B was understandably wary of younger versions of himself.

But Miles wanted to see the base, and, honestly, so did Gwen, as weird as the whole situation made her feel. When would they ever get the chance to see themselves working together all in one universe again? It was worth a little discomfort for that. After screaming into his elbow for a couple seconds, B relented, and they swung through the city back towards wherever the spiders made their home base.

“So, do you guys have roles?” Miles asked as they traveled. “Like a superhero squad in cartoons? You know, the strong one, the fast one, stuff like that.”

“You could say that. After all, I am the muscle around here,” Ghost said, flexing the arm she wasn’t using to swing. “RJ’s got the most powers, and Cobalt has the most fine-tuned Spider Sense. How about you?”

“Well, I do turn invisible! And I’ve got a venom blast.”

That was the energy for their whole trip, pretty much. It was… Kinda nice, actually. A little like hanging out with Ms. Walters, a nice easy medium between the band and like, Dad’s old people friends.

‘The base’ turned out to be an apartment that RJ explained was actually shared by Cobalt and his partners – no elaboration.

As soon as the door was open, the three Spider-people that belonged in the universe they were in tugged off their masks immediately. And sure enough, Ghost looked a hell of a lot like Gwen thought she might in a few years – with added bling, because she seemed to have a lip piercing and about three more ear piercings than Gwen herself. RJ looked like he could be Miles’s older brother. And Cobalt… Gwen felt bile climbing her throat and had to choke it back down. He was shorter, and his face was a little rounder, and she tried to focus on those things, because otherwise he was exactly what Gwen would have imagined Peter to look like, if he’d ever made it to that age.

Miles was the first of their group to step into the apartment, and like the doppelgangers he took off his mask. Gwen followed suit, feeling as though she was watching herself from the outside. B brought up the rear and closed the door behind them.

“Well,” said Cobalt. “Here it is, home sweet home. Make yourselves co—”

“We can’t stay long. We’re just looking for Daredevil,” B cut in, eying his younger double in a distinctly uncomfortable way that Gwen could totally understand.

Ghost, RJ, and Cobalt glanced between each other for a few seconds, then shrugged.

“Never heard of ‘em.”

B groaned.

* * *

Miles knew it wasn’t ideal, their doubles not knowing Daredevil, but he hadn’t totally lost hope yet. Cobalt and RJ and Ghost assured them that maybe someone else in the house knew. Apparently, the Spidey Squad had their own support team, too. They were like, real superheroes. Miles was just narrowly not freaking out at how cool RJ was. That was _him_. Ganke was never gonna believe it.

Cobalt shucked his gloves, and Miles noticed that he had a dark, shiny metal ring on the middle finger of each hand. Without even looking, he slid his still-costumed feet into a pair of ugly blue house slippers and then hurried further into the apartment.

“Ned, darling, light of my life, guess what I brought home!” Cobalt crooned, taking three more steps to sweep an unfamiliar guy away from a book and into his arms.

“Peter—!”

The stranger had short black hair, full cheeks, and dark eyes that crinkled with the exasperated smile that spread across his russet face. Though he was built bigger – both taller and wider – than Cobalt, Spidey superstrength meant he got lifted off his feet and twirled effortlessly.

“Another world-ending disaster?” he guessed, grasping Cobalt’s shoulders for balance as he was spun. “An ulcer? Cold pizza?”

“Better,” said Cobalt indulgently. “Definitive proof of alternate universes.”

This answer only spurred a laugh as their spinning came to a stop and Ned, whoever he was, was set back on his feet.

“Definitive proof? The Mandela effect isn’t real, look, just because you remember it being Berenstein—”

Which was about the moment he caught sight of all of them at the door and gaped. Miles, filled with an awkward terror, offered a tentative wave. Next to him, RJ snorted and continued shrugging out of his costume. Ned looked back and forth between them and Cobalt, then said something that sounded suspiciously like one of the Tagalog swear words Mrs. Santos from the laundromat where Miles cleaned his costume muttered sometimes and then told him never to repeat.

“Ned!” Cobalt choked out, hand jerking forward like he was gonna cover Ned’s mouth and then slapping back over his own to smother a laugh.

“You were serious?” Ned demanded. “It’s not even my birthday! It’s not even our anniversary! How did they get here—”

“I don’t know, but they—”

“—what’s it like where they’re from—”

“—figured you’d want to see, because they—”

“—have so many questions, and I need— I need my notebook— Peter, wh—?”

While they spoke excitedly, volume rising, Miles caught some movement from the corner of his eye. A lady he hadn’t even noticed unfolded herself from an armchair, rolling her eyes and blowing dark curls out of her face. She had a thin sketchbook in her slender brown hand, which she closed as she stood up and walked right over to Cobalt and Ned. They didn’t even notice, too engrossed in their conversation.

“Hey nerdzoids,” she said, whapping them both over the head with the sketchbook. “Be cool. You’re scaring the babies and the old man.”

That was enough to get Cobalt and Ned back to planet earth, where they sheepishly took stock of the way everyone was staring at them.

“I mean, uh, welcome to our humble abode?” corrected Ned. “I’m Ned, this is MJ.”

He gestured at the unfamiliar lady.

“Mary _Jane_?” Peter asked, stunned.

She quirked an eyebrow at him in the most impressive judgment face Miles had ever seen.

“Michelle Jones.”

“Oh, uh. Ok, ok, cool. That’s. So, the three of you, you’re all—” Peter cut himself off. “You know what, I just won’t ask.”

“We’re dating,” Michelle answered anyway.

This Peter had to have a lot more balance in his life to have two stable partners and not, like, push them away. Miles decided not to voice that out loud, though, out of respect to Peter who was already looking at these guys like he had at any mention of the blond Peter from Miles’s universe with all his cool gadgets and successful love life. The guy was working on himself, and like, you weren’t supposed to compare your progress to others and all that, even if they were technically you.

“Grab some slippers and come on in,” Ned told them. “No need to stand in the doorway, I promise we don’t bite here. Mostly.”

So, Miles grabbed some slippers from the box – neon green, where did they even find these? – and ventured further in. When he turned to look back at the others, RJ was in a real tight black tank top, with his suit hanging around his waist and a pair of yellow slippers on his feet. But that wasn’t what caught Miles’s eye. Nope. It was the massive burst of also-yellow sunflowers all over the guy’s shoulder.

“Whoa…”

RJ caught him staring as he stepped further into the room.

“You want a closer look?” he offered.

And yes. Miles did want a closer look, for sure.

“I’ve never seen tattoos that vivid,” he admitted, leaning in to get a good look at the cleanness of the lines. “These are graffiti-bright, man.”

RJ grinned.

“Cool, isn’t it? I designed the formula for the ink myself — nothing like a Spidey-boosted immune system to fade regular tattoo ink into nothing. Had to get them redone from scratch three times before I had it right, and, well. I wasn’t expecting the vibrancy but I’ll take it, you know?”

Miles laughed.

“No kidding.” He paused, waffled for like, a minute, and then decided, hey, these guys had been pretty open so far... “Hey, can I ask? Why ‘RJ’?”

“It’s a Spidey Squad thing.”

“Huh?”

“Ghost Spider.” Ned said suddenly, and when Miles looked at him, he pointed at Ghost. “Cobalt Blue Tarantula.” Then at Cobalt. “And Red Jumping Spider,” he finished, pointing at RJ.

Miles laughed, couldn’t help it.

“Red Jumping Spider?”

“Well, with two of us, we couldn’t just be Spider-Man,” said RJ, rubbing his chin. “Had to get a little creative.”

“The names were my idea,” Ned told them all grandly. “Can’t have a superhero squad without awesome thematic names.”

“Like Night Monkey?” wondered Cobalt, tapping his chin.

“That was a joke suggestion and you know it!”

“Was it, though?”

“My vote was for Spider-Woman, Spider-Man, and Spider-Lad,” Michelle chimed in, the suggestion of a mischievous grin just touching the corners of her lips.

“Um?” said Miles.

“She wanted these two to duke it out over who had to be Spider-Lad,” explained Ghost with a gesture between RJ and Cobalt.

That started a whole round of bickering that reminded Miles of everyone ragging on each other on the basketball court on a Saturday afternoon.

“Seriously, _what_ is going on out here?” someone called from the room off to the right. “Can’t a man wash his rice cooker in peace? I would think at least a couple of you would appreciate what an important member of our family it—”

And then, there in the doorway, was… Ganke. It had to be. Same posture, same face, same completely dumbfounded look of surprise. He’d slung a white dishtowel over his shoulder and his hands were still shiny with water.

“ _Miles_?”

RJ cleared his throat.

“Over here, Ganke.”

“Don’t— don’t do that to me,” Ganke ordered, poking a finger at RJ’s chest. “I thought someone hit you with a de-aging ray or something, and— Wait. Wait. If you’re you, then who’s…?”

“Alternate universe doubles,” Cobalt burst in, pretty much bouncing with excitement.

Ganke eyed him, then turned back towards Miles.

“Then. He. You…” He gestured vaguely. “… _Miles_?”

“Uh. Hi?”

There was definitely some squeak in there. Miles tried to ignore it.

“Oh, wow.” Ganke took several steps closer, seeming to forget about his rice cooker. “That’s… Wow. That’s uncanny. Hi there, tiny Miles.”

Miles nodded, then wondered if that was like, the right response to a ‘hi there’.

“You’re so tall,” he at least managed to say, instead of ‘you’re so handsome’. “I mean. Everyone here’s so tall. But I guess that’s, like, a puberty thing.”

 _I really need to stop talking about puberty so much_ , Miles thought hopelessly. Ganke laughed. It was a nice laugh. Deeper than the Ganke in Miles’s world but, again, that… That made sense. What with this version of him being A Man and all.

Were he and his Ganke gonna grow up to be this cool? Because Miles was definitely down for that.

“I hit my growth spurt late,” Ganke told Miles. “And then someone—” he jerked a thumb at RJ— “whined at me for months about not being the tallest anymore.”

“Balance was restored to the universe eventually,” retorted RJ. “We were both late bloomers.”

He raised and lowered a hand to indicate the inches he had over Ganke. It earned him a playful jab to the shoulder. It was… Nice, seeing everyone joking around. This Spidey Squad, it felt like having everyone from the multiverse all together in one world. Miles liked that, that there was a universe like this out there.

Of course, when he mentioned that, the Spidey Squad people got all confused, and Miles had to explain with help from Gwen and Peter about their whole thing, and how they weren’t actually from the same universe. That set Ned and Cobalt off again, but this time it was Ganke that cooled them down instead of Michelle. When he did, Ned got the same joking shoulder punch from him that RJ had.

“Like that,” Miles explained. “I mean, I don’t even know if there is a Ned in my universe, but if there was, we’d never really have met each other or interact like this because my Peter was older than me. Anyway, I just think it’s, like, really cool that you’re buddies.”

“Me and Ganke? Oh, we’re not buddies. It’s purely mercenary,” Ned claimed, but the solemn look on his face wavered like he wanted to laugh. “Like, Peter’s the white guy. Gwen’s the blonde white girl. Betty’s the dark-haired white girl. Miles is the black guy. MJ is the black girl. But when you’ve got two fat Asian guys on your squad, people have to either actually learn your names or die.”

Finally, Ned broke and chuckled, and Ganke offered a fist bump which was accepted immediately.

“That joke’s only funny the first fifteen times you tell it,” said Michelle, who was grinning.

“Then,” noted Ned, “I’ve still got fourteen more times until it gets stale for our new friends.”

There was a loud sigh. Everyone looked at Peter, and Miles winced at the strain on his face.

“Look. We’re on kind of a tight schedule here – we weren’t even supposed to stop in this universe. This has been fun and all, but we’ve gotta see who we came to see and go.”

Silence filled the apartment.

“Right!” Cobalt said, clapping his hands together loudly. “Right. Ganke – Daredevil? Sound familiar at all?”

Planting his hands on his hips, Ganke considered it for a good long while.

“No,” he answered at last. “Not ringing any bells.”

“He’d work with the Defenders,” Peter added.

Ganke snapped his fingers.

“Them I know about.”

That pretty obviously perked Peter up.

“Great! Great. So just tell us where we can find them and we’ll be on our way.”

But Ganke shook his head.

“Sorry,” Cobalt apologized, frowning. “I’d be happy to help but we don’t really deal with them; I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Yeah, they stick to their thing and we stick to ours, there’s not much crossover,” agreed Ghost.

RJ cleared his throat, looking sheepish. Then there was a big, long, awkward silence.

“Well, actually…”

“Are you serious?” Ghost demanded.

He shrugged.

“Luke Cage gave me his number a while back.”

“He _what_?” asked the rest of the room almost in unison.

“You got an in with the Defenders and didn’t tell me?” Ganke demanded, scandalized. “Miles. Dude. I thought we were friends.”

RJ’s expression turned panicked.

“We are! Of course we are! Best friends!”

“I was one degree of Kevin Bacon away from Iron Fist and Blindspot this whole time! And you never said a word! You know how few Asian-American heroes there are out there!”

Miles was distracted from Ganke’s outrage by a questioning noise from behind him. When he glanced up at Peter, he found the guy’s face scrunched in confusion. Before he could ask, the volume of the argument picked up again.

“I gotta call Luke for these guys!” RJ protested loudly. “Come on, man, I gotta call! Shhh!”

“Yeah, you run away, but that’s not the end of this,” Ganke warned in a way that promised A Reckoning.

RJ, already with his phone up to his ear, just gave a thumbs-up. After a few seconds, the other end of the call seemed to pick up, and he dragged Cobalt with him over to the computer sitting on a desk at the far wall. Everyone else kinda split up, then. Gwen chatted hesitantly with Ghost and Michelle, Ned started poking at Peter, and Ganke… Ganke scared the crap out of Miles by patting him on the shoulder unexpectedly.

“What’s going on in that head?”

Miles shrugged.

“Nothing, really,” he said. “Just. I dunno, it’s wild, seeing you all like this. Big fancy team, and all that. Like, real heroes.”

“You’re gonna get there, man,” Ganke promised, offering up a fist to bump. “All you need is time.”

Miles glanced over at RJ, who looked so much like Dad and Uncle Aaron as he stood over Cobalt’s shoulder and gestured at the screen in front of them both, still talking on the phone. That was ten, eleven years into the future. What if…

“You think so?” he asked quietly.

“Do you trust me?” When Miles turned to meet Ganke’s eyes again, they were soft. “He worried too, y’know. A lot. Way too much. Like you. But everything worked out ok. Now come on, are you gonna leave me hanging?”

He wiggled his fist back and forth until Miles bumped their knuckles together.

Pretty soon after that, RJ finished up his call.

“You’re good to go,” he promised, stuffing his phone back in his pocket. “Luke and the others’ll meet you at his bar – I’ll get you the directions.”

“Wait, uh. Before we go?” Miles pleaded. “It’s just, Ganke – my Ganke, I mean – he’s really big into, y’know, superhero stuff. I don’t suppose… You’d have some kinda stats I could bring back to him?”

Grown-up Ganke’s stare was intense, to say the least.

“Stats?”

“Oh boy,” Michelle mumbled.

“Stats?”

“You’re gonna love this,” promised RJ.

“Fantasy football enthusiasts have stats,” Ganke muttered, pushing past Cobalt to rummage through the drawers of the computer desk. “Actuaries have stats. I have…” He turned back around, flashing out a hand holding a fan of laminated cards. “Trading cards.”

Then he pressed them into Miles’s hand.

“I can take these?” he asked, just to be sure, flipping through them.

The art on the front was fantastic. Some of it, Miles noticed, had a sort of familiar shape to the lines that sent a thrill up and down his spine. This was _his_ style. His, a decade down the line. Flipping through the cards showed RJ, Ghost, Cobalt, a dude Captain America, that Iron Fist guy that Ganke had mentioned, and a handful of other kinda familiar faces and names. Nobody that seemed like they could be Daredevil, though, he noticed. The backs had ratings for strength, speed, and agility, plus a list of powers and a little blurb about the hero.

“Yeah, go ahead, I’ve got copies. A present, from me to me,” Ganke said, grinning.

Miles knew, without a doubt, his own Ganke was gonna flip when he got the cards. Not only were they super rad, they’d been made by alternate universe versions of _themselves_. It was like the cool souvenir jackpot. Miles tucked them safely in a small pocket of his backpack for safekeeping.

“Thanks, man. That’s… Thanks.”

Ganke’s smile got softer, and it was a little too much to look at straight on.

“No problem, little buddy. What are BFFs for, right?”

* * *

Gwen wasn’t as raring to get out of the Spidey Squad’s apartment as B was, but she definitely felt relieved to be back on the streets of this weird universe instead of surrounded by heroes who had it way more together than her.

It was actually a pretty quick trip to the bar, which just had a large sign over the door that said ‘Luke’s’. Yellowish light beamed out the windows despite the ‘closed’ sign in them, and the doors were unlocked.

B entered first, then Gwen, with Miles bringing up the rear. Waiting inside were four adults, leaning against the bar. The first on the left was an absolutely huge black guy with a shaved head and a sweet expression as he chatted with the dark-haired white woman in the leather jacket next to him. To their right was a messy-haired Asian guy yawning into his hand and wearing a very expensive tracksuit – like, the kind that rich ladies in gated communities wore. And on the far right…

On the far right was a familiar face. A couple years older and wearing sunglasses, yeah, but that was for sure Sam Chung standing next to the rest of the so-called Defenders where B had assured them Daredevil was supposed to be.

All of them looked up as the bell over the door jingled. The big guy unfolded his arms.

“Hey there,” he greeted. “I’m Luke Cage, this is Jessica Jones, Danny Rand, and Sam Chung. Y’all must be the, uh, multiverse tourists RJ was talking about.”

“Yeah, that’s us. I uh. I know it’s weird,” B said, rubbing the back of his neck.

“I mean, don’t worry about it,” Luke Cage assured them in a voice as deep as his smile was pleasant. “We’ve seen some pretty weird stuff over the years, this ain’t even the top ten.”

Why couldn’t there be heroes like this in her world, Gwen wondered. This universe seemed to have an absolute smorgasbord of good guys, and all Gwen ever got was more supervillains. It wasn’t _fair_.

“So, who is it you’re looking for?” Rand asked them.

“Daredevil?” said B. “I figured he was with you guys, he’s a Defender in my universe. Red suit, horned mask?”

Jones snorted.

“You looking for a vigilante or a cheap Halloween Satan? I’ve never heard of a guy like that.”

The others all agreed.

“No? Maybe he’s not in the horns yet. Uhhh… Well… He’d operate primarily out of Hell’s Kitchen,” B offered.

Jones sucked in a breath through her teeth.

“Oh, shit, the kid.”

Gwen looked over at Miles and B, but they looked back with equal amounts of confusion.

“The... Kid?” she asked at last.

“Fast little dude,” elaborated Jones. “Big on the punching and the sweet ninja flips. Wears a mask that doesn’t have eyeholes. At least forty percent feral. The kid.”

“He moves like he was Chaste-trained,” added Rand, scuffing a hand through his hair. “But Sam and I can never get close enough to talk to him.”

“Slippery little bastard,” agreed Sam, but the grin on his face looked almost proud.

“I asked him if he was ok once. Told me to fuck off and then backflipped off a four-story building,” Cage added wryly.

B pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.

“Yeah, that sounds like Red.”

* * *

Rand and Sam had been the ones who’d seen their Daredevil most often, so they helped with figuring out where a good block to start looking was. Despite the late hour, they were pretty nice about the whole thing, even if Rand did keep yawning. When Gwen and Miles and B finally had their heading, the Defenders waved goodbye and then dispersed too.

“Well, here we go. Finally,” B said as the three of them swung through the city. “With a real lead. And then we can get the heck out of here.”

“Come on, this universe is kind of cool,” protested Miles.

Gwen tuned the two of them out, her mind on the Kid. Even as rude or scrappy as he sounded based on what the Defenders had said, he was still a good guy. B was probably right, that Gwen’s Murdock was the odd man out. But it wasn’t fair. What was it about her universe that made the bad guys so bad? Was she just gonna have to live forever knowing that her Murdock was a bad guy?

Infra-Red’s words came back to her suddenly.

“Unchangeable? No. I don’t believe that. We’re not destined to be anything, good or bad. It’s all just luck, and the choices we make from there. I took for granted that Fogs would always put up with me, or that he knew how I felt so I didn’t have to say it, but that’s not how things work. I made a choice, and it was the wrong one, and I have to live with the consequences. But I wouldn’t trade my past for anything, because the mistakes I’ve made have changed how I live my life going forward. Look, Gwen, I don’t know you well, but it sounds like this is weighing heavily on you. And from my experience, it’s… It’s easy, to get lost in the dark. Sometimes people dig holes they don’t know how to crawl out of, and even if it isn’t hopeless, they still need help. But it’s your decision, how you want to handle things with this, ah, problem-version of me; you don’t owe him anything. You seem like a bright kid, and Peni speaks real highly of you. I think no matter what you decide, you’re gonna be just fine.”

It was… Nice, that he believed in her like that. She was kind of a screw-up at the best of times, but Infra-Red thought she was bright. Peni spoke highly of her. That was really cool, actually. But even more than that… Something about those words…

It wasn’t destiny, that Murdock was evil. Infra-Red had seemed so certain of that. Luck and his own choices. Well, luck Gwen couldn’t do anything about, even her own. But choices? What if he made different ones, going forward? Like Infra-Red had said. What if…?

Gwen was so caught up in thought that she almost kept swinging when B and Miles dropped to the street. Thankfully, neither of them seemed to notice.

“Well, here we are. No sight of him, but…” B cupped his hands around his mouth and continued at a normal speaking volume. “Matt. Matt Murdock. Matt.”

For like five minutes, B continued calling, to no response.

“Sure, just announce that you know his secret identity, I’m sure that won’t freak him out,” Gwen said, rolling her eyes under her mask.

From experience? Yeah. Not at all a calming sort of declaration. And it wasn’t like the other universes, where they had someone to break the ice for them – this Matt Murdock wouldn’t know any of them, and it sounded like he didn’t even trust the heroes from his own world. In other words, it was going to be a pretty long shot to get him to show.

If he was like Murderdock, he’d have put in an appearance ages ago – just to satisfy his own ego - and stood around posturing. But someone like Red or Infra-Red? A guy like that would either steer well clear or come in swinging.

B seemed to have the same thought.

“As long as he doesn’t break my ribs, it’s fine.”

“ _Dude_ ,” Miles replied with horror in his voice.

Crossing her arms, Gwen hunched her shoulders up by her ears.

“Maybe we should just go.”

“You’re the one who wanted to meet him,” B pointed out. “Look, if I know Matt he’s lurking around here somewhere listening. Do you really want to give up when you’re this close?”

“Well. No, but—”

“Will you shut up already?” demanded a voice that sounded way closer to Miles’s fake deep voice than any of the adult Matt Murdocks that Gwen had met.

“Speak of the devil,” B murmured like he’d just said something clever and not the most obvious pun in the book.

The person who stepped into the dim glow of the street lights didn’t have any horns. But he did have a mask that covered his eyes, with no holes or lenses to see through. All in black, just like the Defenders had described. And…

They’d said kid, yeah, but. But this wasn’t… Adults around B’s age like the Defenders, they could call pretty much anyone kid. But this Daredevil? He was Gwen and Miles’s age. Had to be – slightly gangly and awkwardly proportioned like Miles, with the same voice crack, and shorter than Gwen. She found tears springing to her eyes and wasn’t sure why. Next to her, B let out a wheeze like he’d been punched in the gut.

“Crap,” he hissed under his breath. “Crap, crap, crap—”

The thing was, Murdock was like, quintessential Bad Guy. It was easy to imagine him having crawled out of the void six feet tall and smirking like an asshole. But he had been this age once. Gwen’s age. He’d been just a kid. And like Infra-Red had said, luck and his choices had made him into the guy he was now. But the kid version of him standing in front of her? He had all those choices, all those possibilities ahead of him, and realizing it made Gwen’s stomach squirm uncomfortably. What would it take, to turn this kid into Murdock? What _had_ it taken, to turn Murdock into the person he was? She didn’t want to know.

Worst of all… Even this scrawny, around-Gwen’s-age Matt didn’t look as skinny and underfed as her own Murdock, she realized. And that was… Kind of concerning. Did the guy even eat? She wasn’t sure if he _ate_. Horrible.

“Hey there,” Miles greeted kindly while Gwen and B caught their breath. “Matt, right? I’m Miles. We just wanna talk, man.”

He just… Came out and said it. Sure, they were in a totally different dimension where it didn’t really matter if anyone knew their names because they’d be gone in like, an hour. But still.

The scowl on kid Daredevil’s face deepened.

“About what?” he demanded.

“Look, uh, _kid_ ,” said B in a voice that implied he was dying inside. “I’ll level with you, we’re just passing through, here. But we wanted to meet you while we were in town, chat with the uh, up and coming vigilante we’ve heard so much about.”

“You’re lying.”

Right. Probably not the best idea to stretch the truth in front of a human lie detector.

“Look—”

“I don’t have time for this,” the kid snapped. “Unlike you people, I have a job to do.”

And then he took a flying leap at a fire escape and was gone. Obviously, they ran after him – if Daredevil had a ‘job’, then that meant a fight. And even if this wasn’t their New York, any of their New Yorks, leaving someone to get hurt wasn’t really in their playbook.

They caught up just in time to see the poor kid get slam dunked into a dumpster by a couple of big guys in, seriously, ski masks. Some kinda protective papa wolf instinct took over B then, because he pulled some kind of wild spin-kick she didn’t even know he could attempt without breaking all his bones, and sent one of the guys clear across the alley. The other one had a knife, which Gwen webbed out of his hand and into a wall. Then Miles swept his feet out from under him. After all that, the two goons decided discretion was the better part of valor and booked it.

Based on the half-jimmied window about a floor up on one of the buildings, they’d been confronted by bitty Murdock before they could do whatever it is they came to do. With that in mind, Gwen felt fine letting them go. She lifted up the dumpster lid and peered inside. It was just the kid, no trash bags, thank goodness. She was pretty sure super sniffers and trash bags were a bad mix.

“Whew. Good thing this was empty,” she joked, yoinking bitty Murdock out of the dumpster by his scruff.

He flailed until she dropped him, and in the process knocked off the black mask over his eyes. To reveal… Brown hair? Yeah, that was definitely brown hair.

“Huh, he’s not a redhead,” B mumbled. “That’s new.”

Gwen leaned in, squinting, and then had to dodge out of the way of bitty Murdock’s hand. His eyes weren’t blue either, she realized. They were brown too; big and dark with long lashes.

“Hey. That’s no way to treat somebody who just saved your butt,” she told him, snatching up his mask and holding it out for him.

“I didn’t need your help,” he growled as he jerked the mask out of her grip, and wow did that thick Kitchen accent pop out when he was pissed off. “I coulda fuckin’ handled it.”

“Not saying you couldn’t,” B answered, almost managing a soothing tone. “But it’s like the kid said, before. We just want to talk.”

“You mean lie?” demanded bitty Murdock. “Because what you were doin’ before wasn’t talkin’, it was lyin’.”

“Technically,” B said, “it was both, so—”

“I think we should just tell him,” interrupted Miles, and that made sense to Gwen; lying hadn’t exactly gotten them anywhere.

So, despite B’s discomfort, the three of them explained about being from other universes, and that they each had a Matt in their own universe – so, when they’d landed in this one, they wanted to see what its Matt was like. They left out the bet, but didn’t lie about it either. There were just things people didn’t need to know, like the fact that they had evil doppelgangers.

“Well,” Matt concluded when the tale was all told, and his flat tone reminded Gwen of Murdock when he was slightly exasperated but not really angry. “Either you’re totally nuts or you’re telling the truth, because I can tell you’re not lying.”

“I know it’s a lot to take in,” said Miles. “I mean, trust me, when these guys dropped in to my dimension, it was pretty crazy. But, you know, it’s really cool having friends from totally different worlds. So, I hope that we can be friends too.”

One hit KO. Nobody could survive that earnest tone. Not B, not Gwen, and definitely not this tiny Matt Murdock with the fluffy brown hair and the baby face. His mouth twisted, and he flexed his hands a couple times, but Miles totally had him.

“Yeah, whatever,” he muttered.

“I guess that means it’s nickname time?” said Miles.

“I’m running out of shades of red,” B admitted.

Pursing her lips, Gwen thought hard about the crayons of her youth.

“Razzmatazz?” she suggested, and was rewarded with a delighted whoop from Miles. “Razz for short.”

There was an indignant scoff from the not-ginger in question.

“You don’t, you don’t get to give me nicknames without my permission,” he sputtered.

“Au contraire, little buddy,” retorted Gwen, a massive grin on her face. “How old are you?”

“I don’t have to tell you that!”

“Betcha I’m older than you,” she taunted.

“You sure don’t act like it.”

Ooh. Ooh. Kid had sass. Gwen did have to give him that. He was as sharp as Murdock, without any of the evil smarminess that made her want to bite him.

“We can think up a different name,” Miles offered, “if you don’t like that one.”

Even in the low light, it was pretty easy to see Razz’s face go pink. Adorable.

“It’s fine,” he spat.

“And yet, you still look grumpy.”

Which was when Miles had the brilliant idea to suggest a game of parkour tag to turn that frown upside down.

“Parkour tag?”

Miles nodded.

“Yeah! It’s like, one person is it, and everyone else chases them over the rooftops to tag them.”

“Come on, Razz, it’ll be fun,” she said, and thought _please let this kid know what the hell fun is_. “You can choose who’s it first.”

Razz pursed his lips, fidgeting with the black mask in his hands.

“And it’s good agility training,” added B.

That seemed to settle the matter. Gwen shook her head. Of course. No way any sort of normal logic would work on Matt Murdock.

“Ok,” said Razz. “I’ll go first.”

* * *

For someone who allegedly hadn’t wanted to play at all? Razz was a competitive little shit. He grinned as he danced circles around them, and backflipped off fire escapes, and just generally bounded around like a monkey on spring-boots. Guy was having the time of his life. Which was… Kind of heartwarming, actually. Gwen tended to be a sore loser, but she didn’t feel too bad about this. It was Miles who finally snagged him with a web and got to go on the run. Him, Gwen could tail better, just because they were familiar with each other, so she was the one who tagged him. And her training with Murdock had actually kind of honed her reflexes, so she managed to last out longer than she would have thought.

Once everyone had had a few turns being chased, Razz called it quits and offered at Miles’s request to share some of his world’s music with them. By the time B – who had begged out because his bones were too old – caught up with them, they’d all ended up flopped on a rooftop, laughing, even Razz, and trying to share two earbuds between three people. B spent like, two whole minutes with his hands on his knees, panting, before he could straighten up and tell them it was time to go.

“Aww man, already?” Miles said.

“We weren’t even supposed to make a stop here,” B reminded him. “We’re way behind to meet up with Ham, and I don’t want him forming a multiverse search party.”

Which was fair. But… Gwen liked this Matt. Well, she’d liked all the Matts, but Razz especially was a breath of fresh air even if he did make her think too much about what Murdock had been like as a kid. She was glad they’d gotten to meet him, and leaving meant one step closer to having to go back to her own universe and face her own crummy Matt Murdock.

With a groan, she got to her feet.

“Ok, ok.”

“You’re leaving?” Razz asked, sounding way more vulnerable than he had before.

“Yeah, we’re kinda behind schedule now,” explained Miles. “But… Maybe we can come back and hang out some time? If you want?”

Razz’s big dark eyes went bigger. He shrugged, shuffled his feet.

“I, um.” Licking his lips nervously, Razz ducked his head. “I’d like that.”

Gwen pushed past the massive crack that had suddenly formed in her heart to put a hand on his shoulder.

“Me too,” she said. “See you around, ok?”

Razz’s mouth twitched up at the corner.

“Well. _You_ might see _me_.”

“Dude. You’re so not funny,” Gwen told him, but couldn’t help smiling a little too.

After another round of goodbyes, Gwen and Miles triple-checked that B had entered the right universe number in his watch before they let him press the final button. Then, together, they stepped into the portal.


End file.
